claudiamatossilva

Hilda by Duane Bryers

just-fic-me-up

More Hilda!!

themockingcrows

in this family we love and support Hilda.

i-am-the-narwhal

Yes! Hilda!

luidilovins

What i love about this artist’s depictions of women is even the sexualized ones the woman is always genuinely happy and enjoying herself. Frolicking or making funny faces, she’s living her life and looking sexy while doing it, not sitting in a sexual pose for the audience’s view.

squish-this

I always forget about Hilda and am so pleased when she randomly shows up on my dash. Always makes my day

snailfarts

I love Hilda so much and I want her to be happy

numinous-queer

My favorite thing is how Hilda is always doing something and having a BLAST! She’s not posing coyly for anyone, she’s having her own adventures and it’s not about the viewer at all

rosellacwrites

Always reblog Hilda!

sumi-sprite

HILDA MY LOVE

antirpg

I’m glad ppl on tiktok are doing ok

ofide

good lord

normal-horoscopes

YEAH I GOT NOTHING

vonlipvig

i don’t understand a single sentence in this and i’m ok with that

queer-qunari

I haven’t stopped saying “it’s called quantum jumping, babe”

thebuttkingpost

I would genuinely like to know who to blame for making these children so disconnected from the concept of imagination that they think the simpler explanation for what they’re doing is that they’re projecting their consciousness into one of infinite realities where fictional characters are real.

judgejudyofficial

topical :/

goldcrescent

WHY IS IT TOPICAL

animefacialrecognitionsoftware01

Me shouting at my rash ointment

gallows-alligator

great post everyone

Media Representation and Writing Characters with Facial Differences

[Large Text: Media Representation and Writing Characters with Facial Differences]

A writing (?) guide (?) consisting of an explanation of what facial differences are, some basics about the community of people with facial differences, a terminology guide that is extremely subjective, a very long explanation of the real-life effects of misrepresentation of facial differences, a subjective guide on why most tropes surrounding facial differences are awful and unoriginal, and the part that people actually want to see (I hope at least) AKA "types of characters I do actually want to see". As always, this post is meant for people who have no experience with the subject, and not in any way an attempt to tell writers with facial differences on what to do in their own writing.

What Does "Facial Difference" Mean?

[Large Text: What Does "Facial Difference" Mean?]

"Facial Difference" (FD for short) is an umbrella term for any kind of scar, mark, or condition that makes your face visibly different. This encompasses anything from not having parts of the face or having less of them (e.g. anophthalmia, anotia, hemifacial microsomia), having "more" to the face (e.g. tumors, neurofibromatosis), conditions affecting how the face moves (e.g. facial paralysis, ptosis, cranial nerve diseases), ocular differences (e.g. hypertelorism, nystagmus, strabismus), conditions affecting the colors of the face (e.g. rosacea, vitiligo, pigmentation conditions in general), a "look" that signals a specific disability (e.g. Down Syndrome) and approximately a million more things - scars, burn marks, craniofacial conditions, ichthyosis, cancer, and a lot more.

Despite popular opinion (popular ignorance would be more accurate because no one knows about it in the first place but opinion sounds better-) people with Facial Differences have both a movement (Face Equality) and a specific word for the oppression we experience (Disfiguremisia). There is even the Face Equality Week that happens every year from 17 to 24 of May! This is a real thing that has been happening, and we are generally going unnoticed, even in the "representation matters" circles, the body positivity movement, disability spaces, and so on. There is an alliance of organizations dedicated to this called Face Equality International, who can help you learn about the real-world community and movement! They even have sections specifically about media representation, which is foreshadowing for how important this topic is to the community and for how long the "explaining the issues of representation" part of this post is.

And of course, if you have a facial difference/disfigurement, you can do whatever the hell you want when writing! Call your characters how you call yourself, subvert the tropes you want. I don't want to preach to people who already know all of this firsthand. This post is meant to explain some things to people who don't have experience with having FD.

Terminology

[Large Text: Terminology]

There is a lot of words to describe people with FD. Some of them are alright, most of them are awful.

Please keep in mind that all of these terms (maybe except for the... last one...) are used by real life people. This isn't me saying "you can't say that about yourself" (more power to you!) but rather to educate able-bodied people that some words they refer to use with aren't as neutral as they think (at least not to everyone).

However, there is also one pretty awesome and simple way to describe them!

Tropes and Current State of Representation

[Large Text: Tropes and Current State of Representation]

If you have read basically any of my previous posts about FD then you probably know what I'm about to say in this section. Still worth a read though? I hope. Warning that this is long, but you probably expected that already.

One thing I will note at the start is that I'm aware that a lot of writers were already turned off from this post just because of the terminology section. I know that artists love describing people like me as ugly deformed monsters! It's literally a tale as old as antiquity, and that's how overdone and stale it is. Visibly disabled = ugly. I get it, I heard it a thousand times before, I hear it majority of the time someone is excited to tell me about how horrible and gross their OC's scar is. But now some guy (me) from that group is telling you to like, maybe stop calling your disgustingly deformed character that!

I want to make it very clear that FD representation in media is not treated like a real thing that's worth anyone's time, even by the most "representation is so important!" writers. I guess it's too inconvenient to unpack the amount of baggage and uncomfortable implications this would cause. It's too good of a device in writing; everyone knows that if a guy with a scar shows up that it means he's evil, the easiest way to make a villain visually interesting is to make them a burn survivor, and if you need a tragic backstory for a serial killer just give them a congenital disability that caused literally everyone in the world to treat them horribly, so of course they started killing people. It's such a good moral signifier that literally every book and tale has done - pretty is good, ugly is bad. Dichotomy is so helpful. What is less helpful in the real world is that what is considered "ugly" is generally very tightly bound to what visibly disabled people look like. Ugly Laws weren't just like, coincidentally including disabled people and disability activists aren't still forced to speak out against being put in those "Ugliest People" lists by accident. This is all to say that facial differences are considered to be "ugly" completely uncontested, and you probably have this bias too, as the vast majority of people do. The whole "the character is ugly, then they become evil, if they're evil, they become ugly"... you need to be conscious to not do that. Don't make them evil if they're visibly disabled because it will always end up being the same old trope, no matter how many weird excuses and in-universe explanations you give. I want to put it in people's heads that you are writing about a community of people who are technically visible in real life, but have no large voices that the general public would listen to when it comes to how we are seen. The general public relies on media to tell them that.

Putting people with FD in your books or your art seems to suddenly be intimidating for a lot of artists when they realize that not only is facial difference a real thing, but people who have it can see what you write or draw (and your other readers will take some things out of what you write, subconsciously). When an author is faced with the fact that maybe they are doing harm with their writing, they either: suddenly don't want to do that anymore at all, or say: "I don't care! I'm going to be very innovative and make my very evil OC be deformed!" which is kinda funny to me that people actually seem to think it's edgy and cool to repeat the most tired Hollywood tropes but that's the best we can get I guess lol...

The attitudes that people have around the topic of facial difference and the whole "media impacts reality" are very interesting to me in general. On one hand, when I tell someone that I was bullied or ostracized because of my disabilities, no one is ever surprised. On the other hand, everyone is for some reason uncomfortable when I say that this doesn't just... appear out of thin air. People are taught from childhood that facial differences and the people who have them are scary, untrustworthy, or literal monsters. Media is a major factor in that. Like, looking back at it, it makes sense that my parents told me not to stare at other kids because they would get scared. After all, I looked like a kindergarten version of the bad guy from some kid's book. Other kids were able-bodied and looked like the good guy, I was visibly disabled and looked like the bad guy. That's the lesson kids get from media on how people with visible disabilities are: evil, scary, not to be interacted with. So they avoided me because of that while I had adults telling me to not even look in their direction. Dichotomy is so helpful, right?

And this doesn't magically stop at children. When I post a self-portrait or a selfie, I usually deal with multiple grown people comparing me to sometimes an animal, usually a specific character from a movie, sometimes even making my face into a meme right away. But if people don't generally see people with facial differences on the daily, then how are there so many specific reactions and so many similar problems that we go through? If it's so rare, then how are people so quick to tell me the character I remind them the most of- Yeah, media. It's always media. It's almost funny how everything circles back to one thing.

I want you, the author, to understand the impact of misrepresentation of facial difference. If you feel uncomfortable because you have done these tropes before, good! That's a sign of growth. If you want to help instead of harm, you need to get over your (subconscious) biases for a minute and think about how a person with the same condition as your character would feel like reading about them. Maybe you are even currently realizing that that one OC with scars is just five harmful tropes glued together. Maybe you are going to reblog this and tell me in the tags that somehow your character decided to be like that, as if they have free will instead of being written by a biased human being. Or, as I said earlier, a lot of people will be annoyed by this post and keep doing their thing. Which is like... whatever, I guess ?? There are a dozen huge movies and TV shows every year that do this. It's so basic and normalized that whatever reach this post will have will change very little. I have been signaled "we don't care what you think about how we portray people like you" my entire life, I'm frankly more surprised when people do actually claim to care. You can, practically speaking, do whatever because the FD community is fully ignored by uh, everyone, and even if I'm disappointed or annoyed I'm just one man and I know (from experience) that most people won't have my back on this topic. It's too ingrained in our culture at this point to challenge it, I suppose. I mean, there have been multiple media campaigns telling writers to treat us as people, and they had practically zero impact on the writing community. But even with my absurdly pessimistic view on this subject, I still decided to write all this. Sure, there are no signs of the industry changing and the writing community doesn't seem to care much, but I still naively hope that maybe the right person will read this and at some point in the future I will be watching or reading about a character that looks like me and actually have a good time, and even more naively that maybe people will gain some amount of awareness of the damage that has been and still is happening to people with FD through media, so that the next time they see that the villain has facial scars for no reason they will think "damn, this sucks" the same way I do. And very, very naively, I hope that people who read this will start seeing us as people. Not villains, not plot devices, not monsters.

Sad part over(?), now the fun(?) part. AKA the tropes! Yay.

"Dramatic Reveal of The Deformity".

Use of the word "deformity" very much on purpose here. This is arguably the most common trope when it comes to FD, and it's always awful. At the very best it links FD with trauma and talks in a Very Sad Voice about how having a FD is the worst thing imaginable, I guess (think a "X did this to me... now I'm Deformed For Life..." type of scene) and at worst it does the classic revealing that the main villain actually was a burn survivor under his mask, because of course he was. In media, people with FD are evil. If they're not, then it's because someone very evil did it to them (the most evil thing of all - causing someone to have a facial difference. the horror!). It can't be a thing unrelated to someone's morality, there's gotta be evil somewhere around it. There is literally nothing good about this trope. Showing FD as something to hide? Check. Dramatizing FD? Check. Placing the way someone's face looks as the worst thing possible? Check. General treating FD as some kind of circus attraction to stare at with your mouth open? Check!

"Wearing a Mask*."

I made a whole post about this one actually, that's how much it annoys me. Putting your character with FD in a mask is so overdone, lazy, and boring I'm not even offended as much as I thought I would. It's like... really? Again? For the millionth time, the character with FD is forced to hide their disability? Is the author, like, scared..? And yes, I know that your character chose to do that for reasons that you as a writer somehow can't control. It's always so strange how it's the character that's in control and the writer is in the passenger seat when it comes to annoying tropes.

*mask here refers to anything that covers the character's facial difference (e.g. eye covering, surgical mask, whatever. it's about hiding it and not a technical definition of "what is a mask")

"Good Guy has the Tiniest Scar You Can Imagine, but Don't Worry! The Villain is Deformed As Hell."

Truly a genre on its own. In the rare instance that a positive character has a facial difference, they have a curiously limited choice; you can have the thinnest, definitely-very-realistic straight line going through the eye (the eye is always either perfectly okay or milky for reasons the author couldn't tell you), the same exact line but going horizontally across the nose, and if you're feeling spicy you can put it around the mouth. Just make sure it doesn't look like a real scar and is instead a straight line done with a red or white crayon. Interestingly, villains have unlocked more options which stem from scars, craniofacial conditions, burn marks, cleft lips, ptosis, colobomas, tumors, facial paralysis, to pretty much everything that's not infantilized, like Down Syndrome. These are always either realistic or extremely bloody. I sound like a broken record by now, but no, your morality has nothing to do with your physical appearance and being evil doesn't make a visible disability get more visible. Shocker. And don't get me started on...

"The Villain turned Evil Because They Have Scars."

Ah, how nice. Disabled people are evil because they're disabled, truly a timeless classic for able-bodied writers whose worst fear in life is being disabled. In case that needs to be said, having a facial difference doesn't turn you evil, doesn't make you become a serial killer, doesn't make you violent, doesn't turn you into an assassin with a tragic backstory seeking revenge for ruining their life. If anything, having a FD makes it more likely for other people to be violent towards you. Speaking from experience.

"The Villain Just Has Scars."

An impressive attempt at cutting out the middleman of "clumsily and definitely not ableist-icly explaining why getting a scar made them evil" and not even bothering with a tragic backstory or anything. They are evil, so of course they have a facial difference, what were you thinking?

"Facial Difference is a Plot Point."

As anyone who's read like A Book will tell you, the only way to get a facial difference is to be in a very dramatic fight or an extremely tragic accident who will become a plot point and thus the facial difference is now Heavily Emotionally Charged and a symbol of The Event/The Tragedy. If you look at media, congenital FD isn't a thing, illness-related FD doesn't exist and boring domestic accident or a fall causing FD has never been seen. It has to be dramatic and tragic or else there's no point in them having it. A true "why are they [minority]" moment, if you will.

"Character gets a FD but then Gets Magically Cured Because They're Good."

Truly one of the tropes that make me want to rip my hair out. Curing your character with FD sucks just as much as curing a disabled or neurodivergent character. Who is this even for? That's not how real life works. This is some actual Bible shit, that's how old this trope is. The only thing you're doing here is making people think that those who do have FD just aren't "good enough". Every time I see it, I wonder what the author would think of the congenital disorder I have. According to this kind of in-universe rules, was I born evil and just never got good? or ??

"Character with FD has Self-Esteem Issues and Hates Their Face."

I admittedly mocked all the previous tropes because they're absurd, ridiculous, offensive, boring, all of the above, and have zero basis in reality. This one however... ouch, right in my own tragic backstory. This is unfortunately a very real experience that a lot of people with FD go through. I even have a hunch there wouldn't be as many if the general public didn't think of us as monsters, but I digress. Yes, a lot of us have or had self-esteem problems, and a lot of us wished that we wouldn't have to go through all the BS we were put through because of it. Thankfully for you, you don't have to write about it! Seriously. You don't need to. As one million people have said before me, "maybe don't write about things you haven't experienced" and I agree here. I have yet to see an able-bodied author get anything about this right. Instead of the deeply personal, complex experience that involves both you, everything around you and the very perception of what others think of you that this is, somehow writers keep giving the tired "character crying and sobbing because they're "ugly" now", because the author thinks we're ugly. Or maybe they're sad because all the other characters with facial differences are evil, and they didn't have the time to prepare their evil monologue for when they inevitably become evil in the sequel? Who knows.

"The Author Doesn't Know."

I'm not sure if a trope can be the lack of something like this, but the author not knowing what their character actually has going on medically is common to a ridiculous extent - this applies to all kinds of disabled characters as well. You don't need to name-drop the Latin term for whatever your character has, but you should know what it is behind the scenes! You should know the symptoms! You should know the onset and the treatment! Please do your medical research.

Things I Want to See More of in Characters with Facial Differences

[Large Text: Things I Want to See More of in Characters with Facial Differences]

The thing you might have noticed is that I want Facial Differences and People with Facial Differences to be presented as normal. Not killers, not SCP anomaly whatever, not monsters. I'm aware that the term is tired, but I absolutely want Facial Differences normalized as much as possible.

I want to see more characters with facial differences...

...and again, I want to see multiple characters with facial differences!

Facial difference and the media is a topic that plagued me for the past almost two decades and won't stop ever, I think. It's a very unique relationship of a group of people who just aren't allowed to get into the industry and an industry that clearly hates them, loves to use their image, and defines how people see them all at once. There's this almost overrepresentation that is consistently awful and damaging to an absurd degree. Most people know more villains with FD than actual people. Certainly doesn't feel great to be one of the aforementioned actual peoples. But I hope that this will change - the negative portrayals that are plaguing the FD community will slowly fade out and a newer wave of portrayals will come in, hopefully this time realizing that we are real people and care about us a bit more.

The thing with facial difference is that it's pretty much impossible to make a specific guide of what it's like and what to do in context of writing because it's an incredible vast category that includes conditions that are very different from each other. That's why this post was more focused on "why you should care in the first place" (sorry for the clickbait) rather than being a straightforward guide that would still be very lacking even if 20 different people were collaborating on it. I really, really encourage everyone who got through this rather long post to do their research on what they plan to write about, be conscious of their own biases, don't pull inspiration from movies because they're all hellholes full of tropes and just sit down for a minute, think of the real-world people with facial differences, and read what we have to say. I know that drawing a guy with a line across his eye is more fun than realizing you're low-key scared of or uncomfortable around the real-world equivalent, but sometimes you have to get over yourself and try to be a better person. Caring about the people you write about is, dare I say, essential. That will certainly make your writing of us better :-) (smiley face with a nose)

If you have any specific questions, feel free to send an ask

mod sasza

olivescales3

Thank you, very interesting!

I'd like to point out that (just to avoid misunderstanding) it might seem like ableism, but technically, Scutter is really in the middle between animal and anthro, however, evolution isn't something that ends, so that kind of wording used in the encyclopedia is very awkward. The encyclopedia did use a distasteful description for Scutter, but about Sir Fangar it's actually intentional, since Fluminox is meant to be a racist colonizer, but unfortunately this flew under the radar for most lol.

(sorry to derail in this paragraph but that's why i am genuinely against, and why it goes against canon, to see each chima tribe as a human ethnicity, since this kind of interpretation is perfectly aligned with pseudoscientific racism).

Also, something about how I see Chima: there is no gender in Chima, and "gender roles" are actually just normal roles for both sexes, but instead of being about gender, it's about the individual (eg. if an animal is strong they could be a warrior, but if their body is more sensitive to pain or they have a physical condition, they might be a historian or something else). So transgender isn't really a thing in Chima in how I see it, unless someone analyzed the characters using human lenses, which creates possibilities for transgender allegories in the characters. It's interesting to see how Chima animals would see themselves if they're intersex, and I think they'd see themselves more like your first description of perisex, but instead of it being influenced by gender, it would be by behavior, similar to how maned lionesses act like males.

I am definitely against giving Chima characters penises and vaginas for non mammals because.... honestly it falls under the fetishization of anthros, since Chima animals are supposed to be animals and not humans. But that is literally an entirely different subject.

Scutter, in how I see it, would be trans because his genitalia doesn't work like the others, as in he doesn't have the necessary bits, but his body's behavior is male. This is what I'm trying to find in Chima characters, or at least see how I can fit in. Chima, for me, is heavily based on animals, so I'm trying to adapt human ideas into animals without making the latter stop being animals...

I don't know if what I said makes sense, but I hope my point came across well lol. Your post was very informative, thank you!

fell-in-love-with-a-fantasy

everyone please do this quiz

Jock-Nerd/Prep-Goth Test

Jock-Nerd/Prep-Goth alignment chart test.

https://www.idrlabs.com/jock-nerd-prep-goth/test.php

tagging @stars-and-birds @oh-lacy @mqstermindswift @tortured-poets-depxrtment @drewlooks @oh-mother-i-cannot-weave @a-bowl-of-soop @trafficlightsaysidk @allsfairinloveandpoetry13 @thatdelusionalnerd @skies-of-gray @bloodied-dagger @el-fandom-birb @hecateisalesbian @ literally anyone else who wants to

a-bowl-of-soop

@thatonesapphicfilipino @theshyqueergirl @lonelycatsblog @andytheoverthinker @s0lit4ir3 @venusplanetoflove2 and anyone else who i forgot or wants tooo

s0lit4ir3

@plumspider @heartstopper-lover123 @sunbeammmm @lonelycatsblog @goosetogoodtobetrue and anyone else /nf

plumspider

@whatsherface0 @torifuckingspring @shy-bi-inlovewithregandmoony @depressed-musiclover @heartstopper-lover123 @not-a-bot-just-an-introvert-fan @deakys-cool-cat

shy-bi-inlovewithregandmoony

Damn okay

@thund3randrain @that-lesbian-gurl @inluvwithremuslupin @inthe-echo @autumnlover66 @siriuslygay1981 @spaceandotheroddities @sleepinginmygrave @jarondont @kat-xox @none-of-it-was-accidental @mayonnaisethepotato @mo0n-water @moonsfavoritedaughter @my-castles-crumbling @my-beloved-fandoms

that-lesbian-gurl

yk i’m not surprised

@some-horse-gurl @jarondont @nyx-of-darkness-1620 @the-decapod

the-decapod

*incoherent grumbles*

@the-crab-demigod @anne-is-okay @jarondont @nyx-of-darkness-1620 @crab-princess and the rest of the world who sees it who aren’t my mutuals.

the-crab-demigod

Huh! Sure.

@trainsgenderfoxgirl2816 @blaisei-unforgotten @haphephobiaworm @houston-lmao

trainsgenderfoxgirl2816

@winterthebeau @kleosvarietyblog @nebulaaaaaa @lunarrspark333 @clovervriskahomosuck @weiwei-uplink @rainthefemboi @femininefreyanyctophile @118sexen

weiwei-uplink

goddamn

@isotopegirl @cosmic-muses @coelii64 @tha--dude @ash-the-tiefling

cosmic-muses

Balanced... as all things should be

tranny-alcchemy

fellow larper :3

ash-the-tiefling

i think everyone i know is in the larp category including myself

tranny-alcchemy

tbh, tumblr users probably self-select for the bottom right area. thats not even counting bias from other things too

ash-the-tiefling

i almost didn't get larp and because i was too much of a nerd

mystical-cinnamoon

@starcrossedandstupid @k1meoo @parrotxx @not-a-boot @mayhem-moth @toasterrrrrrr

mayhem-moth

Yeah that checks out

@goblinofthelaboratory @agentldiddy @the-thing-of-worms @be-gentle-with-littluns @ anyone else who wants to join!!

agentldiddy

Fucking twinsies

@terrencetheshark14 @yourlocalbreadenthusiast @durgalmaple @phlo0p @bacony-cakes @ferno-does-random-shit

terrencetheshark14

I'm very nerd, with a lil bit of goth

tags: @bakersfield-row, @peanutbutter-and-jellie, @willowplantcat, @kerri-the-skunk, @whoevenisoliver, @autistic-fuckwad, @salt-and-tie, @eggothesquirrel, @falsegrey, @rocatex, @ncsasp, @freelancefiend2112, @tallyhoot, @f4y3w00d5, @blacktipreefsharkwizarding, @expectoc, @deadpotat, @shittest-wizard-ever, @ima-snekk, @glugglestar, @vaguelyregrettable, @extraemopossum, @valentine-616, @bacony-cakes, @theidiotdowntown, @supmaww, @crow-the-cannibal, and whoever else who wants to join in :3

whoevenisoliver

why r we all gothic nerds..

tags: @kalsamurai @bugsoda @eyebagtree @indecisiveenby @always-tired-musician @kakaowymordulec @nina-tina + anyone else that's wants to join :3

always-tired-musician

yet another goth nerd lol

not sure who to tag so like if you see this and want to join feel free!!

sylvr7070-evolved

Here on tumblr we have goths and nerds

@totallynotaraccoonindiscuise

totallynotaraccoonindiscuise

How are all of us in the goth/nerd corner

@plural-void @myomya2

plural-void

yeah makes sense

-Phil (missa chimed in too)

biblically-accurate-crow

accurate

@galacticfloralll @how-and-why-do-i-know-this @hybridcrows @wheezethecheeze @starstruckskid @noridoorman and anyone else! Not forced, ofc.

hybridcrows

watch me dance, fellow roleplayers. witness me

@mossathenium-time @lunozapp

olivescales3

I didn't get more "nerdy" just because I put the maximum negative output for the last two questions lol

sic-semper-hominibus

re: that last post, ive said it before and ill say it again: no one deserves to die (deserving is fake and death is bad) but some people need to be stopped and choose to make death the only way to stop them

richard-lengthenhancer

I disagree. Pedophiles 100% deserve death.

sic-semper-hominibus

you are moralizing and weaponizing your disgust in order to construct and justify a category of person you're allowed to murder

what do you think you deserve for this?

richard-lengthenhancer

Sorry, no person deserves to die, thankfully child molesters and pedophiles aren't human, so this doesnt apply to them.

sic-semper-hominibus

denying the humanity of people who do horrible things accomplishes exactly three things:

• give cover to people who haven't been caught yet by allowing them to use their humanity as "proof" of their innocence
• silence any criticism of societal structures and institutions that facilitate those horrible things by putting the focus on individuals who are assumed to be so uniquely monstrous that the ways it was made easy for them are irrelevant
• provide a shortcut to dehumanize anyone you feel like killing: simply accuse them of doing a horrible thing

3.a. if you've already established that only an inhuman monster could kill a child, then all you have to do to get people to burn down the jewish quarter is say that jews kidnap christian children to bathe in their blood

3.b. if you've already established that only an inhuman monster could commit rape, then all you have to do to get people to string up a black man you don't like is find a white woman who's willing to point at him while she cries and babbles

3.c. if you've already established that only an inhuman monster could molest a child, then all you have to do to get people to drag gay people behind their trucks is say that since gay people can't have babies, the only way they can make more gay people is by following a nefarious Agenda to "convert" children by molesting them

3.c.a. meanwhile if you try to address the rampant sexual assault of catholic altar boys, you're met with "don't be ridiculous, he's a priest!" (see #1) and with assertions that even if it does happen sometimes, those priests are just infiltrators who don't represent the church and there's no reason to make sure priests and altar boys are never alone together (see #2)

tl;dr: your disgust-based violent politics are not less reactionary than any run-of-the-mill homophobe or racist's disgust-based violent politics

richard-lengthenhancer

I realized how bad of a take this was after I added my last bit, i apologize for the idiocy i portrayed in my half thought out statements. And I appreciate the way you rebutted this with reasonable statements rather than going hog wild because I said something you didnt agree with.

sic-semper-hominibus

hey no worries. we've all been there, and anyone who says they havent is either 11 or afraid of their social circle

unlearning our kneejerk reactions is a process, and it's not a linear one. its good to practice thinking before we post, but sometimes thinking after we post just has to be good enough

I’m sure someone has talked about this before but one thing I absolutely love about tbosas is how Snow’s descent into villainy is never once presented as something that was inevitable

So many villain origin stories portray this idea of a person who tries incredibly hard to be a good person, who takes every opportunity to be kind and to better themselves, but are ultimately doomed to fail by the narrative. Their environment and their circumstances make it impossible for them to be a good person, and while this is effective from a storytelling point of view it’s not exactly accurate to real life

In real life there is always a point where a bad person makes the decision to do something bad, they make the decision to prioritise themselves, their own power, money or desires over someone else. That’s how real life dictators are made, they are presented with every opportunity to be good, and they purposefully choose to not take it

This makes Snow’s storyline so effective because he is given so many opportunities to do the right thing and yet, at every single turn, he chooses to serve himself instead, exactly like how real dictators are made

Snow, unlike most people we see in the capitol, is in a unique position where he could genuinely have the chance to understand and relate to the people from the districts. He, unlike his classmates, is poor and spends most nights going hungry, he witnessed firsthand the cruelty of the capitol when Clemensia was bitten by the snakes for nothing more than lying about doing her homework, when his sister was forced to sell herself on the streets in order to feed the both of them

Throughout his book, the three people he is closest to are Tigris (who dislikes the hunger games, is a rebel, and a victim of the capitol forced to turn to prostitution), Sejanus (who is originally from district 2, dislikes the capitol and knows he will never be accepted there, and also a rebel) and Lucy Gray (who is a victim of the hunger games, from district 12, and is also treated horribly by the capitol). These are all people who gave him an opportunity to realise the cruelty of the system he was in, a chance to directly confront his prejudices and see that people from the districts are just the same as him, and yet he still refuses to take the chance to change

He is given every opportunity, he’s sent away from the capitol to be a peacekeeper in the districts, he forms personal connections with people from the districts, he helps Sejanus perform funeral rites, and yet at every moral crossroads he comes to he makes the wrong decision. He didn���t have to become a villain, and yet he made the choice to do so anyway, despite every chance he was given

I think it’s a really effective portrayal of Snow as a character, and it’s a very effective villain origin story for the type of villain that Snow is. It never once excuses him from his actions because it highlights just how accountable he was for his actions

cypric-rat-hyperfixation

Hey, you. I… I couldn’t help but notice you are having a rough day… May I offer you some snuggie rats in consolation?

ninjakitten1699

@sibillascribbles08

godlikevampire

Thank you these are very good snuggie rats

isavella5834

Sir… please Sir…May I..May I have s-some…some more??????????????

cypric-rat-hyperfixation

*extends my hand and gently places them in your palm*

thisismisha

Thank you op

mute-chaos

Thank you op, but um can I ask for more please?

scattereda

Here’s my badly lit addition :)

anelfisfinetoo

Some modest additions…

just-a-little-anxious

…Here’s my rats too

surlifen

NO ONE knows how to use thou/thee/thy/thine and i need to see that change if ur going to keep making “talking like a medieval peasant” jokes. /lh

They play the same roles as I/me/my/mine. In modern english, we use “you” for both the subject and the direct object/object of preposition/etc, so it’s difficult to compare “thou” to “you”.

So the trick is this: if you are trying to turn something Olde, first turn every “you” into first-person and then replace it like so:

“I” →  “thou”

“Me” →  “thee”

“My” →  “thy”

“Mine” →  “thine”

Let’s suppose we had the sentences “You have a cow. He gave it to you. It is your cow. The cow is yours”.

We could first imagine it in the first person-

���I have a cow. He gave it to me. It is my cow. The cow is mine”.

And then replace it-

���Thou hast a cow. He gave it to thee. It is thy cow. The cow is thine.”

some-stars

This is perfect and the only thing missing is that when “thy” comes before a vowel it’s replaced by “thine”, i.e. “thy nose” but “thine eyes.” English used to do this with my and mine too (and still does with a and an).

fremedon

The second person singular verb ending is -(e)st. In the present tense, it works more or less like the third person singular ending, -s: 

The -(e)st ending is only added to one word in a compound verb. This is where a lot of people make mistakes:

NOT

If you’re not sure, try saying it in the third person and replacing the -(e)st with -s:

In general, if there’s one auxiliary, it takes the -(e)st ending) and the main verb does not. If there are multiple auxiliaries, only one of them takes -(e)st:

You can reduce the full -est ending to -st in poetry, if you need to drop a syllable:

In some common words–mostly auxiliary verbs, or what you might have learned as “helping verbs”–the ending is always reduced:

Sometimes this reduction takes the last consonant of the stem with it:

Or reduces the -st down to -t:

However! UNLIKE the third-person singular -s, the second person -(e)st is ALSO added to PAST TENSE words, either to the past stem in strong (irregular) verbs or AFTER THE -ed in weak (regular) verbs: 

This is different from the third person!

It’s not wrong to add -(e)st to a long Latinate verb in the past tense, but it’s unusual; it’s much more common to use a helping verb instead:

And a couple last things:

1.) Third-person -(e)th is mostly equivalent to and interchangeable with third-person -s:

HOWEVER! Third-person -(e)th, unlike -s but like -(e)st, can, sometimes, go on STRONG past-tense verbs:

This never happens with weak verbs:

And even with strong verbs, from Early Modern (e.g., Shakespearean) English onward, it’s quite rare. But you will see it from time to time.

2.) In contemporary Modern English, we invert the order of subjects and auxiliary verbs in questions:

If there’s no auxiliary, we add one���do–and invert that:

In Early Modern English, this process was optional, and mostly used for emphasis; all verbs could be and were moved to the front of the sentence in questions:

Do-support was also optional for negatives:

3.) Imperative verbs never take endings:

4.) Singular ‘you’–that is, calling a singular person by a plural pronoun–arose as a politeness marker; and ‘thou’ fell out of use because it eventually came to be seen as impolite in almost all contexts. In general, once singular ‘you’ comes into use, it is used for addressing

‘Thou’ is used for

It is safer to ‘you’ someone who doesn’t necessarily warrant ‘you’ than to ‘thou’ someone who does.

5.) And finally, that ‘ye’? That’s the nominative form of you–the one that’s equivalent to ‘I’ or ‘we.’ 

Any time you’re using ‘thou’ for the singular, the second person plural– ‘y’all’– declines like this:

alphabetcompletionist

made this in advance of the next time it happens

ABCDEFGHI KLMNOP RST V XY

21/26

recipe-unlocked

Recipe Unlocked! The Gimmick Cake!

Cook time - 2 hours

Ingredients - 2 flour, 3 eggs, 1 water, 3 sugar, 1 soul of a Tumblrina

This cake shows that your post has been hijacked by gimmick blogs! It is given to you by someone else as an apology for the other gimmick blogs flooding your notifications

Cook now?

[YES] [NO]

status-updates

What have you done. And do you like the color the sky is

epprbcu-shipping

Recipe × Status

Do you like the color of the sun?

pointless-achievements

Achievement Unlocked:

What Else Did You Expect?

You made a post about gimmick blogs dogpiling a post, you had to see this coming.

mylothearsonwizard

@punctuation-completionist @rotisserie-chicken-detector @carbonmonoxide-detector @were-these-words-in-the-bible @amongus-text-detector

uncahier

@bible-word-counter

bible-word-counter

SORRY THE OTHER GIMMICK BLOGS MADE THIS POST A MILE LONG

✝️Nine of these words are in the Bible!✝️

parentheses-posts

There are two sets of brackets in this post.

bad-tf-ideas

A cake laced with a poison that starts a new gimmick blog in your name.

is-this-a-cat

This is not a cat

i-say-ok

ok.

jasontoddiefor

I need minors to learn how to lie online again. Your name is Derek, you’re 25 and work in accounting now. Please for your own safety learn how to fucking lie. And if you don’t want to lie, then don’t put your age anywhere. Don’t even say whether you’re a minor or not. It is perfectly easy to avoid adult spaces without signposting that you are doing so because you���re a child.

Stating your age doesn’t protect you this only makes you a target.

giritina

Tbh this is kind of absurd victim-blame-y advice phrased as anti-grooming information. I'm sure it's well-meaning, but lying about your age does not protect you from abuse. You're presenting it as if we, the generation who lied, were very safe from abuse. Lying about or otherwise obfuscating my age did not protect me from abuse. First of all, lying about being an adult can make people treat you in a way that is completely inappropriate even if they aren't pedophiles... because they are assuming they are speaking to an adult. The other side of it is that most people seeking to abuse children know how to spot them whether they lie or not. Children are largely not capable of convincingly posing as adults and we should not hold them to that standard. This is advice meant to comfort an adult audience into believing there is a simple solution to online grooming.

Instead of encouraging children to lie, we might try and educate them about online safety in a more productive way. We should spread information about grooming, what it looks like and the consequences of it. Children usually begin talking to adults because that adult is charismatic and kind and gives them attention they aren't receiving. If we can help children understand that this relationship is a traumatic one, we can help them not fall into the cycle of abuse. Adults who are in online spaces with children should understand their power and help the children in that community if they are able. I see better education about these issues in younger people, which is part of why they ID as minors and reject adults from entering their spaces. It is an imperfect, potentially dangerous solution, but it isn't any worse than lying about your age and operating online as though you were an adult.

As an example, when I entered a relationship with an adult, they did not know my age at all until we were already together. They did not know my legal age, legal name, or where I lived. I knew that I was entering this relationship, but had never been taught that a relationship looking like that, one that I entered willingly, could be pedophilic or abusive. They accepted my age and continued the relationship because the illusion of consent had already been manufactured. Lying about my age did not help me, but what would have helped me was an actual understanding of what grooming is and that it isn't just "being tricked into having sex with an old man" or anything else I could avoid via internet safety smarts.

softecat

It’s time to activate it…

Bites The Dust!
now this entire post will be reversed!

averruncusho

Am I having a fucking stroke

hkayakh

Besides posts that are downright terrible like bigotry, this is my least favorite post

yalikejazz1234

this felt like a fever dream

how to write fight scenes

many people have told me that Chum has good fight scenes. a small subset of those people have asked me on advice for how to write fight scenes. i am busy procrastinating, so i have distilled my general ethos on fight scenes into four important points. followed by a homework assignment.

• Fight scenes take place on two axii - the physical and the intellectual. For the most interesting fight scenes, neither character should have a full inventory of the other's abilities, equipment, fighting style, etc. This gives you an opportunity to pull out surprises, but, more importantly, turns each fight into a jockeying of minds, as all characters involved have to puzzle out what's going on in real time. This is especially pertinent for settings with power systems. It feels more earned if the characters are trying to deduce the limitations and reach of the opponent's power rather than the opponent simply explaining it to them (like in Bleach. Don't do that). 1a. Have characters be incorrect in their assumptions sometimes, leading to them making mistakes that require them to correct their internal models of an opponent under extreme pressure. 1b. If you really have to have a character explain their powers to someone there should be a damn good reason for it. The best reason is "they are lying". The second best reason is "their power requires it for some reason".
• Make sure your blows actually have weight. When characters are wailing at each other for paragraphs and paragraphs and nothing happens, it feels like watching rock 'em sock 'em robots. They beat each other up, and then the fight ends with a decisive blow. Not interesting! Each character has goals that will influence what their victory condition is, and each character has a physical body that takes damage over the course of a fight. If someone is punched in the gut and coughs up blood, that's an injury! It should have an impact on them not just for the fight but long term. Fights that go longer than "fist meets head, head meets floor" typically have a 'break-down' - each character getting sloppier and weaker as they bruise, batter, and break their opponent, until victory is achieved with the last person standing. this keeps things tense and interesting.
• I like to actually plan out my fight scenes beat for beat and blow for blow, including a: the thought process of each character leading to that attempted action, b: what they are trying to do, and c: how it succeeds or fails. In fights with more than two people, I like to use graph paper (or an Excel spreadsheet with the rows turned into squares) to keep track of positions and facings over time.
• Don't be afraid to give your characters limitations, because that means they can be discovered by the other character and preyed upon, which produces interesting ebbs and flows in the fight. A gunslinger is considerably less useful in a melee with their gun disarmed. A swordsman might not know how to box if their sword is destroyed. If they have powers, consider what they have to do to make them activate, if it exhausts them to use, how they can be turned off, if at all. Consider the practical applications. Example: In Chum, there are many individuals with pyrokinetic superpowers, and none of them have "think something on fire" superpowers. Small-time filler villain Aaron McKinley can ignite anything he's looking at, and suddenly the fight scenes begin constructing themselves, as Aaron's eyes and the direction of his gaze become an incredibly relevant factor.

if you have reached this far in this essay I am giving you homework. Go watch the hallway fight in Oldboy and then novelize it. Then, watch it again every week for the rest of your life, and you will become good at writing fight scenes.

as with all pieces of advice these are not hard and fast rules (except watching the oldboy hallway fight repeatedly) but general guidelines to be considered and then broken when it would produce an interesting outcome to do so.

okay have a good day. and go read chum.

Duolingo is NOT what it used to be.

Language learning app Duolingo to mothball Welsh course

Emily Price Language learning app Duolingo will mothball its Welsh course at the end of this month meaning it will no longer be edited or up

https://href.li/?https://nation.cymru/news/language-learning-app-duolingo-to-mothball-welsh-course/?fbclid=IwAR0oa3PmTL53e7fNG598TCEde1OWmJ3ONrTO2HQrh9bXfI_4Z-g9gnYaqBU_aem_AfgiNUwz_l-fctbZHiXGZTjJ7keZTg25D7dqzZFmZ-6Y1qlKifQZTPWBd-KZGRxnh1w#lnyzoneo8si1f817r4q

“Duolingo is ‘sunsetting the development of the Welsh course’ (and many others)”.

I’ve used Duolingo since 2013. It used to be about genuinely learning languages and preserving endangered ones. It used to have a vibrant community and forum where users were listened to. It used to have volunteers that dedicated countless hours and even years to making the best courses they could while also trying to explain extremely nuanced and complex grammar in simple terms.

In the past two years it feels like Von Ahn let the money talk instead of focusing on the original goal.

No one truly had a humongous problem with the subscription tier for SuperDuolingo. We understood it: if you can afford to pay, help keep Duolingo free for those who couldn’t.

It started when the company went public. Volunteers were leaving courses they created because they warned of differing longterm goals compared to Duolingo’s as a company; not long after it was announced that the incubator (how volunteers were able to make courses in the first place) would be shut down. A year goes by and the forums—the voice of the users and the way people were able to share tips and explanations—is discontinued. A year or two later, Duolingo gets a completely new makeover—the Tree is gone and you don’t control what lesson you start with. With the disappearance of the Tree, all grammar notes and explanations for courses not in the Big 8 (consisting of the courses made before the incubator like Spanish/French/German/etc. and of the most popular courses like Japanese/Korean/Chinese/etc.) are removed with it. Were you learning Vietnamese and have no idea how honorifics work without the grammar notes? Shit outta luck bud. Were you learning Polish and have absolutely no clue how one of the declensions newly thrown at you functions? Suck it up. In a Reddit AMA, Von Ahn claims that the new design resulted in more users utilizing the app/site. How he claims that statistic? By counting how many people log into their Duolingo account, as if an entire app renovation wouldn’t cause an uptick in numbers to even see what the fuck just happened to the courses.

Von Ahn announces next in a Reddit AMA that no more language courses will be added from what there already is available. His reasoning? No one uses the unpopular language courses — along with how Duolingo will now be doing upkeep with the courses already in place. And here I am, currently looking on the Duolingo website how there are 1.8 million active learners for Irish, 284 thousand active learners for Navajo, and even 934 thousand active learners for fucking High Valyrian. But yea, no one uses them. Not like the entire Navajo Nation population is 399k members or anything, or like 1.8 million people isn’t 36% of the entire population of Ireland or anything.

And now this. What happened to the upkeep of current courses? Oh, Von Ahn only meant the popular ones that already have infinite resources. Got it. Duolingo used to be a serious foundational resource for languages with little resources while also adding the relief of gamification.

It pisses me off. It really does. This was not what Duolingo started out as. And yea, maybe I shouldn’t get invested in a dingy little app. But as someone who spent most of her adolescence immersed in language learning to the point where it was literally keeping me alive at one point, to the point where languages felt like my only friend as a tween, and to the point where friendships on the Duolingo forums with likeminded individuals my age and other enthusiasts who even sent me books in other languages for free because they wanted people to learn it, the evolution of Duolingo hits a bitter nerve within me.

~End rant.

Hi there. I'm going to be vulnerable for a moment. I wrote this book (working title "Synia") over the last 5 years, and finished it up back in April. Since then, I've been holding onto it, willing myself to send out queries. But the fear of rejection, and the knowledge that it's likely not a "sellable" book, has kept me back from actually sending out any letters. To force myself to do something, I'd like to share the prologue with you all. The story is about a pair of siblings who are Syniae, or creatures who have magical gifts based on synesthesia.

If you would like to know more, I'll be happy to blab on about it ad nauseam. If you know of any publishers or literary agents who are interested in such a story, please let me know. If this falls into the empty void, well...that's also feedback that I need. Thank you for reading the above, and I hope you enjoy the prologue below:

-----------------*-*-*-*-*---------------

Grey.

Everything was grey. The sky, the walls, the fog inside her head. Even her tormentor’s eyes were a piercing, unforgiving grey. It was the color that invaded her every thought from the moment she awoke until the moment she finally passed out.

Long ago, there used to be a spectrum. She vaguely recalled the melody of a forest green, the sweet sound of a tempting red, the echo of a vibrant yellow. That was an æon ago. Now, she was reduced to monochrome, the lifeless color of a rainy day.

Today, she had opted for a change of scenery. Instead of spending the entire day in bed, staring at the grey ceiling, she instead sat next to the grey-filtered transpane along one of the walls, watching the mist that enveloped the view.

Suddenly, a low, silky voice called from behind through the mental mist:

“Oh good, you’re up. I was beginning to wonder if I had finally broken you.” The disembodied tone had an air of amusement to it, as though it had told a clever inside joke.

She scowled in reply, but did not turn to search for the source of the voice. She had no words for the man. Words had color to them, and this Orb didn’t allow for that.

“I see. Just as conversational as ever,” mused her captor. “Come now, have I not earned some conversation at this point? We’ve both held up our ends of the bargain. You’re fully cooperative now and haven’t tried to escape in quite some time, and you can clearly see the benefits. Your living quarters are quite generous, and I do try to make sure you’re well fed. For all intents and purposes, you are far more my guest than my prisoner at this point.”

And it was true. The sleeping room she was currently sitting in was rather large, and contained a bed, a small table, and two chairs, one of which she occupied. Attached to it was a respectable bathing room, complete with a tub. There was even a small cooking and eating room across a small, narrow hallway. She should have been comfortable. There were just two major problems: she was here against her will, and everything was that same damnable shade.

When she didn't hear the sound of her "host's" footsteps echoing away from her prison,

her curiosity and anger got the better of her. Almost subconsciously, she turned and gave him a withering glance. The man lurked in the entryway. To the prisoner, he was barely more than a silhouette. What little she could see was distorted by the filtered light, which was designed to reduce everything to the same washed-out shade. Slate shoes and the bottom half of a charcoal suit protruded into frame, along with a pair of ashen hands clasped in front of his sharkskin belt.

He responded to her glare by tugging slightly at the cuff of his sleeve, almost as if he were uncomfortable. It was a ruse, she knew; they had played this scenario out before. She turned back to face the table and transpane as the Grey Man strode in from the entryway behind her. His footsteps tapped a muffled rhythm on the shaggy grey carpet. In another life, she could have made a song from it. Now, it was just another sound to interrupt the monotony echoing pointlessly in her mind.

When he reached the remaining chair across from her, he paused before sitting, and instead looked down at her calculatedly for a moment. Then, he pulled her forward across the small, round table by her chin, forcing her brown eyes to meet his grey, only a couple centimeters apart. She was a bit in shock at the action, but did not dare show it on her face. He had never been this aggressive before.

“Tell me, Synia, what makes you hate me so much? After all, you invited me. I merely gave you everything you asked for,” he purred.

Her eyes widened for a fraction of a second, then just as quickly returned to the hostile glare she had perfected in the last year. He had just given her the ability to escape, but he didn’t know it.

Yet.

She fought to keep her thoughts from showing on her face, taking care to ensure that the mask was firmly in place. Fortunately, he misunderstood the lapse.

“Ahhh, yes. The truth is rather uncomfortable, isn’t it? Just think: if your curiosity and desperation hadn’t gotten the better of you, you wouldn’t be here, and this whole mess could have been avoided. How selfish of you,” he said, almost a whisper. The man thrust her chin away, forcing her to break eye contact and instead focus on her balance. He smirked slightly as he stood up and faced the entryway.

“Still, thanks to you, I have been given the greatest gift of all! Thanks to you, I’m free to move as I wish, and every whim I could think of is catered to my specific design!” His voice rose slightly with each sentence, as if convincing himself that it was true.

He paused and when he spoke again, his voice was back to its usual silk: “Before too long now, I'll have cracked the code and you will truly be at my mercy. I’m getting oh so close. And when I do figure it out, I will be able to be rid of you for good. Until then..." He trailed off dramatically as he walked towards the door. She did not turn to watch him leave.

His footsteps paused behind her, and there was complete silence for several seconds. Her curiosity once again betrayed her. As she turned, she saw him standing with his back to her, the grey fob in his hand extended to unlock the door. However, he didn’t activate it. Instead, he had waited until he knew she was watching to leave his parting shot. His voice returned to the deadly not-quite-whisper:

“Well, that’s the only reason you’re still alive.”

He activated the fob; the door clicked open. She had already turned her back to the door once again by the time he had crossed over the threshold. There was a sound of the electomag lock bolt sliding back into place, followed by gentle footsteps that retreated back into the silence.

She closed her eyes and exhaled softly, like she had a million times before. Only this time, there was a monumental difference: he had finally made an error. He had been so careful in the last four-hundred-and-thirty-two days, sixteen hours, and twenty-two minutes to make sure that her entire life had no color except grey. Every single surface and feature had been carefully selected to prevent her from using her gift.

They had shaved her head every other day or so, leaving nothing but a faint, grey stubble. Her now threadbare clothes had been carefully selected to be comfortable, but monochromatic. There were no mirrors, and every surface that could have possibly held a reflection was scratched or matted down, so she could not see herself. And her tattoos…she still couldn’t think about that, even as she subconsciously touched the scars on her left forearm where one of them used to be. She was to be as much grey as the room itself. But they could not change her eyes.

Her brown eyes.

For an instant, as he held her gaze so close to his own, the filtered light was broken by his own shadow, and his wintery stare became twin mirrors. For the first time in three-hundred-and-ninety-six days, eight hours, and twenty minutes, she saw a color. And she remembered.

She remembered what brown felt like.

That tiny glimpse was all she needed. It was the spark of hope she had been waiting for, that she had almost given up on. She had a color; a good one, even. For the first time in her life, she was grateful that her eyes were the color of cesspools, as he had once described them.

Now all she had to do was focus, plan, and wait for the perfect moment. She had all the time in the Orb. After all, he stupidly thought she was beaten.