#th4nkyoub3n

[mmmmalo]

gamzee vomiting

As you wish...

[argumate]

nurses on the front lines. nurses committing war crimes.

is this a song, I don’t know the next line

[utopianparadoxist]

"DIRK: That isn’t strictly true. I did disappear, but it was in a catastrophic blaze of hope-drenched pathos. I even threw out a couple one-liners." Is this a reference to another fanfic or fanventure?

legit don’t know, didn’t write it.

i assumed it was a reference to Meat Jake, personally? But i’ve seen people speculate it might’ve referred to the Game Over timeline and that also sounds reasonable to me

[nostalgebraist]

"blah blah blah" is the personal problems tag? how does she know what counts as a personal problem?

I use “blah blah blah” as a category tag on this blog, and Frank tries to imitate the way I use tags.

(For some reason, this imitation is quite successful for some tags, while some others like “big yud” are used in a way that looks totally random to me.  “blah blah blah” is one of the successful ones.)

The tags are produced by the same neural net that writes the text of the posts, so “knowing which tags to use for the post you’ve written” is handled as a special case of “knowing what to write next based on what you’ve written so far.”  No hard-and-fast rules, just learned patterns.  See this post for more on how I did this.

[candyredterezii]

th4nkyoub3n replied to your post “oh no!! how does the tz route suck??”

wait is it because vrisr/ezi is boring or because you like gamzee

do i like gAMZEE LMAO

NO

i actively hate vris/rezi and utterly despise gamzee with a burning passion.

i don’t wanna get into why about both but know that it comes from a personal place and even having gamzee almost even be like. a triggering character for me LMAO so

it’s bad for me cus i fucking hate vris/rezi but if terezi doesn’t get w vwiska uwuwuwu she goes to fucking gamzee so its just :/

[gaytog]

@th4nkyoub3n replied to your post “I won’t deny that pointing a gun at your population’s head and forcing...”:

one of the few good things about mandatory schooling is that it forces young children to have peers and be away from their parents and wow I am not making this sound good.

i understand being mistrustful of schools but i personally dislike the nuclear family more

It’s hard. Figuring out which is worse, an inescapable school or an inescapable family, depends on the school and the family and the child in question. For some people, school is a safe haven from an abusive family, while for others it’s an authoritarian nightmare worse than anything their parents could throw at them. Homeschooling is liberatory for some kids and literal cult indoctrination for others.

Putting kids in the hands of the state is, I think, better in one sense: it’s easier to curb government violence against children (or at least certain forms of it) than family violence. Thirty-one states have banned public school teachers from hitting children, but zero states have done the same for parents. This is why I’m in favor of universal childcare in the vein of Warren’s proposal—I think systematizing early childcare will make it easier to protect some young children from some forms of violence that they would otherwise experience at home.

On the other hand, systemic racism is a thing, and parents of color are generally better than the U.S. government at not being racist to their children. I don’t have a clue how to navigate this trade-off except by letting children of color themselves decide how and where to spend their time.

And that’s the main point, I think. Regardless of whether school or family is worse, I don’t think it changes the main strategy, which is to pursue any opportunity to increase children’s freedoms that looks even remotely tractable.

[earlgraytay]

th4nkyoub3n

replied to your post

“so… I realize that this is Certainly A Hot Take, but I’ve been reading...”

how are the characters reacting seriously if the characters are also already implausible

I’m gonna take Dangan Ronpa as an example because it’s the most clear-cut example of this that I, personally, have seen through to the end, but: 

In a work that’s going for this dreamlike heightened state, you’ve usually got an ensemble cast, some on the more normal-human-being side, some on the more implausible side. 

For at least the first part of the story, the viewpoint character is gonna be closer to “normal”, to allow the audience to empathise and sympathise with them. If there’s a clear villain, they’re likely to be closer to the implausible end of the spectrum. 

(In DR, the ‘normal’ character is of course Naegi, and Junko pre-[SPOILERS] and the swimmer girl are pretty close; on the batshit end you’ve got Fukawa, Sakura, the weird otaku guy, Junko post-[SPOILERS]...)  

You put all these characters into a weird-ass crucible. Everything the characters know is turned on its head over and over and over again. The stakes keep raising and things make less and less sense as time goes on. “You’re going to a new school for ‘special’ students” becomes “you’re trapped in that new school without any immediate exit” becomes “a psychopathic teddy bear is telling you you have to murder each other to go free” becomes “people are actually murdering each other, also all the blood is pink” becomes “you’re holding a kangaroo court where you have to literally shoot false arguments down with a gun”... and so on until we get into spoiler territory.

But the thing is, whatever the weird situation is... the main characters, even the ‘normal’ ones, treat it as if it’s really happening, and act accordingly. They are aware of the gravity of the situation. Sure, their characterization might mean they react to the situation in ways that are kooky and odd, but they are still reacting to one of their friends getting frickin’ murdered. A lot of the time they flip the fuck out, as is completely warranted. :p Their motivations make sense in the context of who they are and what’s going on, even if everything is wacky. 

In a hyper-surreal story, the situations and characters may be bizarre. But a competent writer can make you believe that these people, in this world, would react to these situations in this way. 

[apersnicketylemon]

no need to design a new flag. google "A Lesbian Flag for Everyone"

Hi, I designed mine almost a full year ago actually, and while I have seen the other one, I personally find it creates enormous eyestrain. I would not be opposed moving to that one, but it does cause me genuine physical pain to look at it due to the colours used, hence mine is in softer colours.