My little pony oc maker picrew

Note: This is gonna be a very long post, so brace yourselves
As most of you know by now, X-Men '97 will be coming out on Disney Plus this Fall.
This series will be a pretty big deal since it'll mark the X-Men's very first major animated appearance in over a decade!
During the 2010s, due to the rising success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, 20th Century Fox still owning the FILM rights to the X-Men, and Ike "Fuck You" Perlmutter, Marvel basically resorted to pretending the X-Men didn't even exist, removing them from potential media they would be allowed to appear in.
Cartoons, merchandising, and perhaps one of the most egregious, video games.....
Chances are most of you are familiar with Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite.
And you're probably all aware that one of the biggest criticisms towards that game was the vetoing of any X-Men representation.
And not helping was the frankly idiotic responses given to this valid criticism.
Which, let's be real, the people from Capcom only really said half of that shit since they were most likely being held at gunpoint by an executive from Marvel, who in turn was being held at gunpoint by Perlmutter.
And after the game's release, people from Capcom came out to say how much the production of the game was absolute nightmare due to Marvel's bullshit.
And with that being said, the license for MvC will mostly likely never be renewed since after all the bullshit Marvel pulled on them, Capcom wouldn't want to work with them ever again.
But enough about that....
While it is great that the X-Men are finally returning to television after spending nearly 15 years without a major animated appearance, it is a little disappointing that it's being done through a revival of an already existing series.
I'm guessing that Marvel decided to have the X-Men's grand return to animation to be something a little familiar, so when it's time for a new X-Men cartoon that's a bit different from before, it wouldn't be too overwhelming for some.
But when that time does come, I have what I think would a cool idea for a new X-Men cartoon.
The cartoon would be titled X-Men: The Next Mutation!
Essentially the main draw of this series would be turning the characters of the Marvel Universe into powerful badasses right out of a shonen manga/anime.
And I figured the X-Men would be the perfect characters to explore that concept with.
Becuase the reason they're more powerful in this universe, apart from years of rigorous physical training, are secondary mutations.
Yeah in the universe of this series, secondary mutations are much more common among mutants, often happening early adulthood.
Tertiary mutations also exist, but they're pretty rare.
As for the X-Men themselves, the series would feature the biggest roster by far.
It would consist of Cyclops, Psyche (Jean Grey), Wolverine, Storm, Colossus, Shadowcat, Lockheed, Rogue, Iceman, Nightcrawler, Angel, Thunderbird, Beast, Sunfire, Banshee, Dazzler, The Diamond Queen (Emma Frost), Gambit and Psylocke.
There are some notable changes with some of the members of the team.
-Angel will be female by the name of Wren Worthington
-Nightcrawler's last name will be changed from Wagner to Darkhölme, since in this universe, he's the biological son of Mystique and Destiny
(Bonus points for anyone who gets that reference)
-Nightcrawler and Rogue grew up together
-Sunfire and Psylocke's back-stories are much different than they were in the original comics. Sunfire, who while still Japanese, spent most of his life in San Fransokyo, being raised by the Silver Samurai, who in this universe is his uncle rather than his cousin. Sunfire was also a member of the Hand until he met the X-Men and saw the error of his ways. As for Psylocke, she was a Japanese baby raised by the Braddocks, who in this universe are a family of English adventurers. You're probably wondering why I changed their back-stories. In the case of Sunfire, I felt like his original backstory is pretty problematic, at least in my opinion. I mean, it literally had to do with the bombing of Hiroshima. And when you take into consideration that he was created back in the late 1960s, you can't help but go a bit "yeesh" about it. As for Psylocke, I'm sure most of you are familiar with the whole body-swapping mess. Yeah....that shit has been banished to the Shadow Realm. I felt like this new backstory I came with would be a perfect way to still keep the appearance that most people associate with, while still keeping her British.
-I'm still debating on this one, but either Colossus or Gambit will be gender-swapped as well. Essentially, it would be either a female Colossus and a still-male Gambit, or a still-male Colossus and a female Gambit. The reason for that I'm about to touch on next.
In terms of romantic relationships.....
-Cyclops, Jean and Wolverine will be in a polyamorous marriage
-Storm will be dating Thor
-Colossus and Shadowcat will be dating (with a much shorter age difference this time)
-Rogue and Gambit will be sort-of dating
-Iceman will be dating The Human Torch
-Nightcrawler and Angel will be dating
-Beast and Emma will be dating.
-Dazzler and Sunfire will be dating
-Banshee will have a thing for Moria MacTaggert
So yeah, if you considered that possible gender-swap between Gambit and Colossus....that would put Shadowcat and Rogue in LGBT relationships.
Though in all honesty, I'm leaning more towards keeping Gambit male and making Colossus a female.
Since I think it would be nice for Shadowcat to finally be in a relationship with another female for once.
Although I haven't seen too many people mention it, it is pretty strange how despite being canonically bisexual, Shadowcat is still being restricted to male love interests.
I've heard something that it has to do with writer bias, since a lot of them had crushes on her back in the day.
It does seem like they're now gonna change it since she does seem to have thing for Rasputin IV.
Apart from the team themselves, what about their standing in the world?
Well, this might be a bit controversial, but in this universe, the X-Men have finally achieved their original dream of a world where mutants and humans peacefully co-exist with each other.
Since in this universe, the human race are actually decently intelligent.
Along with that, they've come to see the X-Men as what they truly are....heroes, due to the various good deeds they've done over the years.
And because of the deeds of the X-Men, humans have began to change their perspective on mutants overall.
And while there are still humans who hate the mutants, they're more of a minority now.
But despite achieving their dream, the X-Men still persist as heroes....simply because they want to.
Yeah, the heroes in this universe will be actual heroes, people who go out of their way to help those in need.
But you're probably wondering, if the X-Men finally achieved their dream, what kind of conflict would they deal with now?
Well, simple.....
This series would have 4 seasons, with each one focusing on a different antagonist.
The first season will be the Return Season.
The main antagonists will be the Brotherhood of Mutant Supremacy (consisting of Mystique, Destiny, Blob, Pyro, Avalanche, Unus the Untouchable, Lorelei, Sabertooth, Mastermind, Lady Mastermind, and Toad), who had spent the last 2-3 years in the Raft.
That was until they were broken out by Bolivar Trask and General Kincaid (from X-Men Legends).
Their reason for doing so was simple.....revenge.
With the rising acceptance of mutants as whole, plus their frankly heinous actions against them and humanity, Trask and Bolivar have become societal rejects.
They've been stripped of both of their positions by the government, and are now treated like shit by everyone.
This has made the duo's hatred for the X-Men even greater than ever before.
As a result of this, they decided to break the Brotherhood out of the Raft so they could work together to take out the X-Men once and for all and conquer the world.
Although both sides do hate each other, they do form an alliance due to their shared hatred for the X-Men.
Basically the classic the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
And since the Brotherhood have also gone through secondary mutations of their own, they're even more of a challenge for the X-Men than ever before.
The season will also feature other villains like The Juggernaut, Black Tom Cassidy, The Silver Samurai, Sauron, Arcade, and the entire island of Genosha.
Luckily, the X-Men will have plenty of allies to back them up.
These include Charles Xavier, obviously.
Duncan Mathews, who in this universe, is a pretty nice guy and a longtime ally of the X-Men, essentially being like their April O'Neil.
Moira MacTaggert, who's still a human.
Ka-Zar, Shanna the She-Devil, and Zabu.
Nick Fury, who has formed a partnership with the X-Men to promote human-mutant relations.
James Produstar and Theresa Cassidy, Thunderbird's little brother and Banshee's daughter, who are both little kids.
The Avengers and The Fantastic Four, who are actually close allies with the X-Men rather than rivals who try to rip each other's throats whenever they cross paths.
Plus, they have members of their respective teams dating each other.
And I know some of you are gonna ask this, but Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, and Franklin Richards will all still be mutants.
X-Factor (which consists of Forge, Havok, Polaris, Strong Guy, Chat, Longshot, and Multiple Man).
A bit more reluctantly, Deadpool.
And a new ally in the form of Nathaniel Essex, a world famous geneticist who has partnered up with S.H.I.E.L.D. and Xavier to study and learn more about the X-Men and the other superheroes of New York.
But undoubtedly the big bad of this season would be the one and only, Magneto!
There would be a storyline throughout this season involving the Brotherhood searching for the whereabouts of their leader, along with the pieces of his iconic helmet.
And given how powerful Magneto already is in the comics, imagine what he would be like this in new universe where everyone is a badass right out of Shonen Jump!
Also, I wanted to add this real quick, but Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch will be Magneto's grandchildren rather than his children.
I mean, the guy is over 90 years old....
Season 2 would be the Clone Season.
I'm pretty sure you all knew this already, but Dr. Essex would essentially be the main villain of this season, taking on his iconic identity as Mister Sinister.
Sinister's master plan is to create the perfect army of hybrids, made from the DNA of the X-Men and the other superheroes, which is the reason why he worked with them last season.
And he plans to use this army to conquer the world.
So this season will basically be like The Clone Saga, except not shit.
Apart from Sinister, this season would introduce to Marauders and various notable clones of the X-Men, like Madelyn Pryor, Archangel, and even X-23.
Season 3 will be the Apocalypse Season.
As you would expect, the main villain of this season will be none other than Apocalypse, with Mister Sinister serving as the secondary villain.
Apocalypse's plan is to use his Four Horsemen to conquer the world, rid of those he sees weak, and enslave those he deems strong.
This season will not only see the X-Men working with all of their allies, but also their enemies, in order to defeat Apocalypse.
This season would also see a redemption arc for Magneto and the Brotherhood, with them finally going from villains to heroes.
The season would also introduce us to X-Force, a team of time-traveling mutants consisting of Cable, Domino, Shatterstar, Rictor, Boom Boom, Theresa and James (now going by their Siryn and Warpath aliases), Rachel Summers, and the future children of the other X-Men.
Also, since Cyclops won't be hooking up with Madelyne, Cable will be the son of him, Jean and Wolverine, with Rachel being his biological younger sister.
I should mention this that this series would have a lot of influence from shonen manga/anime, with one of the biggest being Dragon Ball Z.
And this season would have one of the strongest influences from DBZ.
Just like Trunks, X-Force will be portrayed as a band of heroes from a dystopian future (that being the Age of Apocalypse), who traveled back in time to stop the source of said future.
The fourth and final season will be the Multiverse/Space Season
This season will be heavy emphasis on the extraterrestrial side of the X-Men.
This season will see the introduction of The Broods, The Flock, The Sh'iar, The Starjammers, Mojo, and Vulcan.
This season will also but a heavy emphasis on the Multiverse.
As this universe's X-Men will meet various iterations of themselves from across the ages.
From the 616, to the Ultimate, to the animated, to the movies.
The main MVP would have to be none other than Jean herself.
A huge plotline for this season is that would become the new host of the Phoenix Force, and is now learning how to use it, with the help of 616 iteration, who has learned to master the entity.
And this Jean really needs to if she's gonna be able to take on the season's main villain...herself.
Well technically it's a variant of her who also became the host of the Phoenix, but was overwhelmed by its power and became evil.
And thus, Dark Phoenix was born...
Many of the multiversal variants of the X-Men and the Marvel characters already knew of Dark Phoenix before the events of the series.....and I'll be honest, they're all scared shitless of her.
And why won't they?
She's an all-powerful being with enough strength to destroy entire planets!
And although they've tried their best to avoid her, they can't anymore when she forces the entire multiverse to fight in a tournament that will decide their fate, and against villainous variants of themselves, all of whom are powerful in their own right.
From Maestro, to The Maker.
And final event is a battle against her and the multiverse's strongest fighters.
If the heroes win, Dark Phoenix will leave the multiverse alone forever.
But if they lose, she'll basically destroy everything and everyone.
Before we wrap up, I do want to talk about the art-style and the animation.
The art-style would be done by Boris Grovez, aka ArtFrenzyBoris, who has a really cool art-style I vibe with.
Not only does it look like something right out of a comic book, but also this sense of expressiveness and a cartoony nature not typically found in most comic books or superhero cartoons.
If you want to check it out, here's a link to his DeviantArt page below.
https://www.deviantart.com/artfrenzyboris/gallery
As for the animation, it would be done by Flying Bark Studios.
The animation studio behind Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Monkie Kid, and Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.
When considering that this series would be heavily inspired by shonen manga/anime, you can't tell me that this wouldn't be the best studio to possibly animated this show.
I mean, have you seen their animation?!
Voice Cast:
.Scott Porter as Cyclops
.Jennifer Hale as Psyche
.Steve Blum as Wolverine
.Danielle Nicolet as Storm
.Chris Cox as Colossus (Male)
.Vanessa Marshall as Colossus (Female)
.Danielle Judovits as Shadowcat
.Dee Bradley Baker as Lockheed
.Melissa Disney as Rogue
.Zachary Gordon as Iceman
.Liam O'Brien as Nightcrawler
.Grey Griffin as Angel and Psylocke
.Johnathan Joss as Thunderbird
.Fred Tatasciore as Beast
.Steven Yuen as Sunfire
.Quinton Flynn as Banshee
.Cristina Valenzuela as Dazzler
.Kari Wahlgren as The Diamond Queen and Gambit (female)
.Troy Baker as Gambit (Male)
.Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier

I'm not a very good artist, all thought I do want to improve my art skills. Until then however I want some way to be able to create my OCs from this little OC verse I've been designing over the years. Just so I can give them like a visual form rather than just lingering in my mind lol. Do you have any tips/websites I can use to do this?
Sorry if this isn't the right place or if its a dumb question. Also thank you in advance :)

I have this huge fear sa mga cockroaches since I live alone now at nag-aaral sa maynila. Hindi ko alam bakit sobrang oa ko pagdating sa ipis pero super nakakatakot talaga ng itsura ng ipis. Mayroon nga prinank ako ng mga friends ko they set up my wallpaper na ipis yung litrato and pag open ko natapon ko yung phone ko to the point na ayaw ko ng hawakan ang phone ko. Nanginginig ako sa takot or balahibo pag nakakakita ng ipis. Kahit nga may nakikita akong patay na ipis i always closed my eyes pag winawalis ko siya.
Mabilis ko pa naman nasesense na may ipis sa paligid ko because of their tiny sound of their little steps, wings, pati amoy.
Nilinis ko yung unit ko just to avoid cockroaches. punas dito punas doon. Trapo dito trapo doon. Walis dito walis doon pati mop sa floor and naglilinis ng banyo. Mahilig din ako mag declutter ng mga gamit or mga pagkain sa pantry na hindi na ginagalaw tinatapon ko na since favorite tambayan ng mga ipis ang pantry. I also make sure na walang natitirang pagkain sa unit ko dahil tinatapon ko na kaagad yan tapos spray agad ng baygon bago umalis. Kahit natutulog ako may baygon sa tabi ko just in case may ipis ako nakikita or nasesense at babangon nalang ako agad just to spray that f****ng insect.
Ayun lang. Is this a sign na kailangan kong magpa therapy? Lol, pero ang oc ko na sa paglilinis to the point na inaaway ko na yung bisita ko if kumakalat sila sa unit ko.

Build Help/Ready:

Have you read the sidebar and rules? (Please do)
yes
What is your intended use for this build? The more details the better.
about 30 percent video editing, 70 percent gaming and regular home use. Games I play the most are Total War (WH3), CK3, Bannerlord, and B4B
If gaming, what kind of performance are you looking for? (Screen resolution, framerate, game settings)
HIGH fps on 1440p, ultra to high settings if possible. my goal is to smash the hell out of 1440p rather than move up to 4k and get 80 - 90 fps averages. My current monitor is a 1440p 165hz 27 inch monitor.
What is your budget (ballpark is okay)?
technically i've set aside 4.5k for this build, but I'm not trying to pay a huge markup just to be on the bleeding edge. the 4090 is too much card for what I want or need, I'm not interested in paying to get pretty good framerates at 4k when I could get killer framerates at 1440p for less.
In what country are you purchasing your parts?
'Murica
Post a draft of your potential build here (specific parts please). Consider formatting your parts list. Don't ask to be spoonfed a build (read the rules!).
PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D 4.2 GHz 16-Core Processor	$669.00 @ Newegg
CPU Cooler	ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 360 56.3 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler	$139.99 @ Amazon
Motherboard	MSI MAG B650 TOMAHAWK WIFI ATX AM5 Motherboard	$219.99 @ Amazon
Memory	TEAMGROUP T-Create Expert 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-6000 CL34 Memory	$169.99 @ Amazon
Storage	Solidigm P44 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive	$119.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Solidigm P44 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive	$119.99 @ Newegg
Video Card	PNY XLR8 Gaming VERTO EPIC-X RGB OC GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB Video Card	$1099.99 @ B&H
Case	Lian Li LANCOOL 216 ATX Mid Tower Case	$98.99 @ Newegg
Power Supply	Vetroo GV1000 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	$155.99 @ Amazon
Operating System	Microsoft Windows 11 Home OEM - DVD 64-bit	$99.99 @ Newegg
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$2893.91
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-06-10 11:28 EDT-0400

Provide any additional details you wish below.
Mostly looking to tweak this build, I am somewhat under budget so basically just looking to improve the experience at 1440p as much as possible. I'm a little shaky on the graphics card but seeing as I do video editing as well as gaming I would like to have all bases covered. I'm really hoping to get 5 years out of this machine, which is why I'm running the 7950x3d, I like the power draw versus the i9 series and I like the fact that the AM5 socket is still due more support.

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 4.2 GHz 8-Core Processor	$449.99
CPU Cooler	*Deepcool AK620 68.99 CFM CPU Cooler	$59.99 @ Newegg
Thermal Compound	Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut 1 g Thermal Paste	$8.28 @ Amazon
Motherboard	*Asus TUF GAMING B650-PLUS WIFI ATX AM5 Motherboard	$214.99 @ Amazon
Memory	*G.Skill Ripjaws S5 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 Memory	$105.99 @ Amazon
Storage	*Crucial P5 Plus 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive	$122.49 @ Amazon
Video Card	*Zotac GAMING Trinity OC GeForce RTX 4090 24 GB Video Card	$1589.00 @ Newegg
Case	Lian Li LANCOOL 216 ATX Mid Tower Case	$109.99 @ B&H
Power Supply	*Vetroo GV1000 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	$155.99 @ Amazon
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$2816.71
	*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-06-10 10:54 EDT-0400

I have not built a PC in 12 years and am really going into this with little knowledge. I used someone else's PCpartpicker list and changed the case and added the thermal paste. Is there anything else I will need to have a functioning PC besides monitor, speakers, mouse, keyboard, and monitor? I think I was recommended to get windows through a 3rd party seller as they go for much cheaper - is this true? The case comes with fans (two RGB front intakes and one non-RGB back exhaust) but I'm not sure if I'll need more. Please give any recommendations or advice please.
My specific question is in regards to the compatibility warning and having to update my BIOS to use that motherboard and CPU. I've done some youtube research and found this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lyUueIjfbo&t=10s . I feel like I understood the entire video but it looks like he was updating BIOS for windows11 and not for CPU compatibility. Will I even be able to fire up this board and get it on a monitor if my CPU isn't compatible? If someone could give me advice on how to update this BIOS for CPU compatibility or maybe even an alternative board that doesn't need an update, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

I am in the process of building a PC. It has been a while so I am struggling a little on the graphics side. My biggest problem is that most information available relates to gamers on card selection. I mainly just want to be able to watch 4K movies. I plan to buy a curved monitor (30-40 inch size range). I may also have a couple secondary monitors for when I am multitasking.
I bought a ASUS TUF Gaming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti OC Edition Graphics Card but I am now concerned after seeing a couple posts on the internet saying it is "entry level for 4K". Maybe they are meaning entry level for gaming or does this also apply to multimedia?
Thanks for any advice.
EDIT* I haven't opened the Graphics Card box yet so I can still return it and get something with different specs.

First Prev
Patreon Arxur POV of the Cradle Series wiki Official subreddit Discord
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Memory transcription subject: Slanek, Venlil Space Corps
Date [standardized human time]: January 16, 2137
The infected predators were whisked out of the research station, and away from the Battle of Mileau to be isolated in quarantine. The Kolshians had been holding the inner sanctum of the system, since the human fleet was mainly composed of Duerten allies. With the goal of a cured Terran race making itself evident, sending rescue teams for the Dossur prisoners was inadvisable. That would need to await proper biohazard gear, which would take days, if not weeks, to arrive.
Earth was making preparations for itself and its colonies to counter “bioterrorist” measures. Marcel wanted nothing to do with me, during our ride to the quarantine station. The cured humans would be kept isolated for study, until they determined whether the disease was communicable. Initial observations didn’t suggest transmissibility through close contact, though it wasn’t clear if other means could spread the virus. All of us relinquished blood samples for a scientist team to peruse.
Tests were run to determine the extent of the allergic reactions, and doctors came prepared to treat anaphylaxis. My bloodwork was the only one that came back allergen-free; it had been determined that the human-tailored bioweapon couldn’t cross the species border to other sapients. As such, I didn’t have to worry about any modifications to my genome, and I was free to leave at any time. The medical staff became primarily Zurulian too, after this development was confirmed.
Nobody has brought up my execution of the Kolshian prisoner, but it’s a matter of time. Has Marcel not been feeling well enough to raise the alarm?
Concern for the redhead was the reason I hadn’t vacated the facility; no matter what, having him in this situation strained my heart. I wandered up to a Zurulian medic, who was conversing with a human in biohazard gear. The quadruped swiveled around, and his face jogged some faint recognition in my mind. Had I seen this individual before? No, what mattered was discovering how Marcel was holding up, since my…former best friend wouldn’t speak to me.
“Slanek!” the Zurulian announced. “Just the Venlil I was hoping to find. When I heard you and Marcel were among the infected, I had to come.”
I leaned my head back. “We do know each other. You were there, at the battle of Earth. Helping to save his family. Your name is…”
“Wilen. You might remember my wife, Fraysa, too. We wound up living on Earth after the war, sharing notes on human and alien physiology with top experts.”
Fraysa ducked out from within a cabinet. “The Zurulian exchange program was a great way to get to learn what the predators are really like! They don’t deserve this. I understand how close you were with your human, Slanek. Mine is into gardening—gardening, for fun! A predator.”
I don’t give a shit. We met for about an hour, months ago; we’re not friends.
“Cool.” My tail twitched with irritation. “Could you guys tell me how Marcel is doing?”
Wilen squinted. “You haven’t asked him yourself?”
“Oh, of course I have! I just mean from a doctor’s perspective—what’s going on biologically. I’m worried, and I wouldn’t want to ask in front of him. You might not be as straightforward if it’s bad news.”
“Walk with me. I have to deliver these fever-reducing medicines to the sick ones,” Fraysa replied. “The short version is, the virus inserts DNA into the human genome, which induces desired immune reactions to specific meat-based proteins and enzymes. The severity varies from person to person.”
Wilen trotted after his wife. “I was just talking about Marcel’s bloodwork; I want to help him. What Fraysa is saying, is that some humans may only react severely to meat and egg foods. Others are more sensitive to lesser things they eat, like animal lactation, boiled animal tendons in gummies, or even things they wear like cured hides.”
“They put what in gummies?!” I shrieked.
“I thought you knew.”
“Forget it, Doctor. How does this relate to Marcel?”
“Marcel’s blood shows signs of an especially sensitive reaction,” Fraysa commented. “It could be because he’s vegetarian, so some of the proteins are particularly foreign to his body.”
Wilen pawed at a semi-circular ear. “I’m sure you don’t like to think this about your friend, but predatory items pervade human culture, far beyond diet. His furniture and his clothes are probably animal-sourced. Their medicine, a nurturing field by definition, is no longer safe to him; he won’t be able to get egg-based vaccines. I was informed by a human colleague that even cosmetics for dry skin and shoe polish might be off-limits.”
“Treatments for dry skin trigger the cure?” I blinked in confusion, unable to believe the predatory items ran that deep with my human. “Why?”
“Because of a wool grease called lanolin. Look, he’s going to need to be very careful. Our simulations suggest extreme cases like Marcel can’t even breathe the vapors of cooking meat, without triggering anaphylaxis.”
Fraysa slipped a pill packet under a door. “Wilen and I were shocked, realizing how deep hunting runs in the fabric of human society; it’s almost better not to know. What do you think should be done, dear?”
“I think it might be best for Marcel to live on a Federation world, if he needs to avoid animal products altogether. Maybe you could offer to take him in, Slanek, on Venlil Prime?”
My legs locked up, and left me unable to follow the Zurulian medics. Wilen and Fraysa whirled around, noting the shock on my features. Since Marcel didn’t consume meat in the first place, I figured the cure wouldn’t affect his daily life at all. It was within my knowledge that he ate some “animal products”, such as the revolting lactation juice Wilen mentioned, but I figured those could be cut out of a diet too. It wouldn’t be that big of an adjustment, given that my human already avoided them around me.
But now, I realized something as simple as his slick couch, in his Earthly home, would induce the allergic reaction. Marcel couldn’t go to social events with other humans, if breathing in the scent of flesh would place him in jeopardy. That would’ve precluded hanging out around Tyler, or being in the service at all! The vegetarian’s military days were over; it didn’t seem fair that his ordinary life was ruined too. Shit, if he got sick, he couldn’t seek some treatments at a Terran hospital anymore.
Poor Marcel will have to think of every little thing, as small as treating chapped lips in the winter. If he stays on his world, I don’t know how he can go out in public without risk…but he certainly doesn’t want to live with me.
I pinned my ears back, searching for an excuse. “Marcel has family on Earth. He has a life there!”
“It will be…difficult, for his predator relatives and friends to accommodate him. They’d need to be very cognizant,” Wilen said. “I’m not pressuring you to do anything you don’t want to. But if you care about him, you need to tell him what staying on Earth means for him.”
“He could wear some breathing mask…and a contact suit?”
Fraysa scrunched her nose. “Maybe, but does he want to do that every day of his life? It’s a rough situation. Though there is good news, Slanek.”
“What, that he’s not dead?!”
“I’m sorry you’re so upset. But the good news is, for the air-transmission version, there might be hope of reversing the cure in the near future. The humans have their own gene-splicing systems, such as CRISPR. This incident helps them understand the general principles of what the cure adds, so it might help them identify unnatural edits in other species too.”
“I don’t care about other species! They don’t want it undone, I can fucking tell you that. Marcel does!”
“Well, the humans might be able to undo his gene edits, with proper study. If he chooses to stay away from Earth, it might only be for a little while. His normal life might be restored in a few years…maybe months. Terrans are quick studies.”
Hearing that the predators could figure out a reversal, without outside assistance, alleviated my guilt for killing Navarus. Clearly, we didn’t need any of the prisoners alive to undo the damage. Besides, there were more captives, like the scientist my friend had brought in, who could provide the information Earth sought. That demonic Kolshian, who laughed at the idea of destroying Terran culture, deserved a bullet to the head. Marcel was unreasonable, but other humans might be more rational. Maybe I was fretting over one man’s skewed morality.
I chewed on what the Zurulian doctors imparted. “You qualified the hope of reversing the cure as being for the airborne version. Does that mean the other humans, from the research station, are incurable?”
“We didn’t say that, but the injected-serum is much harder to cure,” Wilen proclaimed. “I think that’s why the Kolshians favor that method, when given a choice. They transmit the virus directly into the bloodstream, and also inject certain proteins and enzymes into the skin…to spark allergies the old-fashioned way.”
“I see. So they’re permanent herbivores.”
“Permanent’s a strong word, Slanek. Curing the genetic side would prevent the disease from being passed to offspring, at least.”
Fraysa flicked her ears. “Besides, I expect you would know, as a vegetarian’s friend, even if those people are eating grass…humans are still violent predators. The Kolshians succeeded in pissing them off, not gentling them.”
“Right! What makes them human is that they’re insane,” Wilen remarked. “So, my Venlil buddy, are you able to break the news to Marcel for us? He deserves to know right away, and it would be better coming from you. A friend.”
“Well.” My throat clammed up with guilt, not wanting to reveal our relationship’s dire straits. Selfishly, all I wanted was to see and comfort Marcel during this revelation; I could brainstorm a plan to ease my entry into his room. “Yes. I’ll tell him.”
“Excellent! Well, his door is right here; I’ll leave you to the unpleasantries.”
My eyes widened with alarm, as the Zurulians pushed me through a plastic isolation flap. It hadn’t occurred to me that the conversation’s timetable would be accelerated; I hadn’t realized we were walking past Marcel’s room, while I was distracted worrying about him. Wilen and Fraysa watched with expectancy, giving encouraging ear flicks. Nausea twirled in my belly, as I didn’t dare explain what happened between us.
My paw issued a tentative knock, before I twisted open the sealed door. The red-haired predator studied me with lethargic eyes, perspiration lining his skin. He shifted on the bed, and curled his lip with displeasure. A booming cough racked his body, causing him to fall back against the pillow. A pitcher of water had been nearly drained; he hadn’t been able to get up to refill it at the filtration sink.
“Hi Marc,” I offered.
A low groan came from his mouth. “Go…away.”
“Please, let me get you some water. I can’t leave you like this.”
I scurried over to the pitcher, feeling my heart rate hit an all-time high. Chiding myself not to drop the glass and look like more of a fool, I carted it over to the spout. The water filled the jug with the speed of molasses, and my tail swished across the floor with impatience. Temptation overtook me, so I risked a glance at Marcel. The human’s face looked puffy; it was clear his immune system was in overdrive.
I wish that I could curl up next to him, and make him feel better. I miss having such a wonderful friend.
Those hazel eyes struggled to stay focused on me, which caused sympathy to tug at my heart. I balanced the full pitcher with new determination, pressing it to his lips. The rift between us felt palpable, as Marcel reluctantly accepted the hydration for his own sake. Even in his discombobulated state, I could see that he hadn’t forgotten what I did. Fury was causing him to distance himself from me; I got the sudden feeling my lie had been what pushed him over the edge.
“I was asked to tell you something, by the Zurulian doctors,” I spoke hurriedly, while setting the pitcher down on the table. “Your reaction to the cure is severe. The doctors don’t think you should live on Earth for a while. They said you’d be deathly allergic just smelling meat or touching animal products…like apparently, your couch. Which I slept on.”
Marcel didn’t speak a word. Even in his listless stupor, his binocular eyes managed to level me with intensity. I noticed a slight lump pass down his throat; he was either swallowing down hurtful thoughts or thirst. The human, who’d become the faithful friend my world revolved around, just wanted me gone. That stung worse than the prickle of a thousand thorns, but I was glad we hadn’t quarreled again.
With legs that felt as heavy as stone, I trudged toward the door. It was impossible not to feel the predator’s gaze boring into my spine. His judgment punished me, as if he were the aggrieved party in the Navarus execution. Part of me was angry about the Terran’s mandatory policy on mercy, but I couldn’t berate him in this sorry state.
At the end of the day, I cared about Marcel. What I said to him back on the research station was accusatory and less-than-kind, though it was true enough. If this was the last time we ever spoke to each other, I didn’t want to cut contact with hurtful words. Perhaps he could learn to remember our adventures with some fondness, in time. This hadn’t been how I wanted our close-as-brothers bond to fizzle out.
“I’m sorry that they did this to you.” I kept my back turned to the human, resting a paw on the door handle. “You remember why I joined the exchange program? I read your book, Frankenstein. About a monstrosity who only wanted a friend…or acceptance, and was hated and abused by the world. Judged for his appearance.”
There was nothing but silence from the human, and the certain feel of his watchful gaze. Without looking, I could feel the dazed rhythm of his blinks. How had I ever feared that Marcel would harm me? He couldn’t dole out punishment to the people that deserved his wrath, let alone to anyone he called a friend.
“I felt sorry for the creature. For you. And maybe, in some weird corner of my brain, I was curious what it was like to be a monster,” I continued. “Now, I know that I am one too; just not one of appearances. Maybe the book was trying to say that the real monsters were the ones who wronged the physical monster. I hope you’ll find someone who sees you for what you truly are, because I can’t do it anymore.”
My paw cracked the door ajar, and I slumped my shoulders in the entryway. This went against everything that my heart desired, pulling away from the only person I thought I truly knew. The reality was that I had changed too much; Marcel didn’t sign up to be partners with someone he saw as a monster. If I could go back to how things used to be between us, I would. Now, I had nobody to turn to.
A faint growl rumbled behind me. “That whole plot you saw was bogus. The real ending…of that book. Not the censored one the UN doctored up. Do you know what it is?”
My head whipped around. “What? You changed it?”
“Of course we did. It’s a vengeful story, not one where Frankenstein’s monster is innocent and lives alone with another of his kind. The real tale? Suffering immensely from rejection…the creature strives to take everything from his creator that he ever loved. After the death of his maker occurs, the wretch commits to end his own life of unhappiness in turn.”
“That’s…” My blood ran cold, as I tried to decipher what lesson such a story could tell. That was in stark contrast to a story that garnered sympathy from the viewers; it proved the point that the monster was a monster! “I don’t understand.”
“Humans changed it because we wanted you to take the message that we could be friends. We weren’t trying to vow vengeance for our rejection then. But maybe we should’ve left the message that there are consequences, for such inhumane and callous treatment of a ‘monster.’ It’s fitting, in hindsight.”
“That doesn’t sound like something you would say…Marc.” I took one hesitant step back toward the Terran, and noticed that he had averted his eyes. “You never want consequences.”
“Fuck, you think I don’t want the bastards to pay for all of these horrible things? I have…suffered plenty too. You seem to forget.”
“Then why…why do you let every bad person we come across get away with everything?!”
“I don’t. Read the book, and maybe you’ll understand. Here…I’ve had a copy in Venlil-script on me, ever since I knew you liked it. I wasn’t sure about giving it to you, but now I am.” The human rummaged through a satchel near his bedside, and weakly held it out with a hand. I inched closer, pulling it from his slender fingers. “There’s also a lesson for the monster in there. In his revenge, the monster damned himself too. I know from Sovlin that that was almost me.”
“I lied to you. Can we ta—”
“No. Come back when you’ve finished the book, and then, we’ll talk. I…need to rest. And process my family’s future.”
My tail flicked in a gesture of acceptance, and I plodded out of his quarters with a lighter heart. Marcel didn’t sound as angry; his voice was choked with tiredness, but his hatred had evaporated. Perhaps the human didn’t have the energy to project his grudge, though I wasn’t going to complain if that was the reason. It must be a lot for him to reckon with, learning how the cure would wreck his entire life. He still hadn’t complained or exploded with emotion.
I have no idea how he really feels, but I guess I’ve started to assume he doesn’t experience hate. He’s just always so…moral.
My claw traced the cover of the real Frankenstein, wondering how it could apply to my own feelings of monstrousness. Maybe I was ready for the lessons humanity hadn’t wanted the Venlil to absorb in the beginning. I had fallen far enough to heed teachings meant for the more depraved minds among predators. Regardless, I was curious to see what the full narrative held in its pages. If this was a slight chance to salvage my friendship with Marcel, it was a no-brainer to seize it.
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the new chapter of Make your Mark was released and obviously since my little pony is a musical cartoon new songs were created.
but there is something i notice in this chapter and it feels like it's been going on for a while, does anyone feel that the lyrics of the songs from mark your mark and some of tell your tale are displaced from the plot?
obviously in musical stories the songs have to have some connection with the plot and therefore the composition and lyrics are directly linked and that.
for example in the film we have the song Fit Right the song came about because izzy would disguise her friends as unicorns and show how they really act and not how the prejudice of the other tribes see them, listening to the lyrics of the song we know exactly where it came from and what is the purpose within the plot
but that doesn't seem to happen with mym's songs I feel that if they were in any other show or if it weren't even a show song they would work the same, for example: show me you pony moves, sunny wanted to sing this song with friends, to show the unity of the tribes and that they can work together, but the lyrics of the song have none of that message anyone listening to it without watching it wouldn't be able to guess the context behind it.
this is not necessarily a problem, for example in adventure time we have the song everthing stay which is wonderful but no one could guess the context, or smile from g4 which has no narrative purpose but is a great song.
I just find it a little curious that most of the songs in the show are like that, but it's not a complaint since the songs aren't bad, it's more of an observation, maybe it's just my impression, what do you guys think about it?

Hello everyone !
4 months ago I made a post about a program to make Ace Attorney Case : Introducing Ace Attorney Engine & Studio : A case maker for Ace Attorney Trilogy
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I come today with news of the projects. The project has been stagnating for 1–2 months due to the complexity of the Maker. (The Engine part is almost done). It's due to my lessons at High School, personal projects and other. BUT now I am in vacations ! I will have time to continue the Maker. I think before making a GUI Editor, I will make a JSON type editor. It will be a little more complicated to use, but I want to take my time to make a good editor
Thank you for waiting, I will give some news during the month of July or August

Hello, I have finish to build my new pc an I would like to oveclock it a little bit. May I have some suggestion? My config is: AMD 5 7600x, Asus rog strix b650e-f, crucial ddr5 CT2K16G56C46U5 2x16GB 5600MHz, Asus dual 4070 oc, Asus rog strix 750w. Thanks.

A while ago, I posted a test that was to determine what kind of writer someone is, based on what part of the “modernist” spectrum they fall into. Part of the reason why I did this was to see how much I understand about the subject matter, since I will always have a postmodernist tell me that I am clueless as to what any of these are. Another reason is to have writers start realizing why they think the way they do, and possibly start questioning why they write how they do. I found out that, from the dozen or so people who took the test and posted their results to me, that most people I encounter and get along with online are modernist. A lot of these people reject mainstream media and they are secluded in alternative media sites because they don’t get along with the current overton window that’s among popular sites. I think it’s safe to say a lot, if not all, of these people are anti-woke, and they received 1 or 0 answers on the woke aspect of the test.
If I can pat myself on the back for anything, at least I can say I got the woke part correct.
Although the buzzwords I used for woke might be cheating since we all know I’m referring to something woke when I say something like “inclusivity” or “intersectionality” or “oppression”, because anyone who listens to even something like Joe Rogan will know these terms and treat them like they’re dripping with vomit and diarrhea. A lot of us, especially the classical liberal, center to center-right types, and even the center-left types, are tired of this woke nonsense. Even some guy who drinks beer while watching football and shopping at a basic store like Target is tired of this tomfoolery.
So this followup is to address a lot of the complaints I received and also to bring in some insight into how I wanted to conceptualize the test and how it turned out. I will also explain the relevancy of this type of test since some are wondering why something like scoring modernist means anything.
In philosophy, you are to hit 5 branches in order for your philosophy to be considered “full” or at least “full enough” to be granted a name. These 5 are:

1. Metaphysics (study of existence)
2. Epistemology (study of knowledge)
3. Ethics (study of action)
4. Politics (study of force)
5. Aesthetics (study of art)

If you hit all 5 of these at least once, you have a full range of addressing the stuff that makes up a philosophy. I tried to reverse engineer these 5 categories into 22 questions, and after the fact(meaning this evening), I realized that I should have had 4 questions for each category and then 2 questions about the reader and then the writer. The number 22 is related to the major arcana in tarot, with the 2 extras being the fool(the writer) and the world(the reader). That or maybe something like “what exactly do you write in your story?” and then that can relate to worldbuilding or something. It would have to be a question that lets us know what the person sees as a good world to write in the first place, because then that would show us the world they aim for, which is related to their worldview.
Or maybe to question what they read so that we can see what a writer finds interest in, so that it correlates with what they would write.
That was not critiqued by others, but I know I messed up on that. I was listening to a Jordan Peterson video where he said that a good survey questionnaire takes months of planning to get the wording right for the questions and the answers, and I looked at my test and saw I did it in a day, and went “well, I think I messed up, yeah.” My own critique will be taken into consideration so that I can remake the test and make it better. To repeat what I said in the test: I wish to use this to determine who to avoid when hiring and working with people, because anyone scoring even something like 2 answers on the woke mentality is something to be concerned about.
Other critique involves question 1 where the phrase “copy it” should be changed to “emulate it”. Yeah, I agree, that makes more sense, since copy makes it sound like someone is not putting their own spin on it or putting it in their own words. Imitate, match, resemble, something that intends to retain the purpose but including your own position on the matter. Question 17, how we get our knowledge, is a very open question about epistemology, and that one seems to have given a few people the woke answer by accident, even if they aren’t woke in the way they answer. The problem with the term “lived experience” is that people think it’s a normal term and it is one of the few woke terms that go over some people’s heads. The term is used commonly in correspondence with articles that feature globohomo artwork and they talk about how it’s important to have a person in your corporation or non-profit organization who holds “lived experience” and they are referring to living as a black person to know what a black person feels.
I find this incredibly woke because, as I’ll explain further later on, the woke are saying that the only way to know something is to be that thing, thus forcing writers to be, say, autistic in order to write an autistic character. Or they must be a woman to write a woman. Or they must be a black to write a black. This enforcement is what causes the demand for diversity hires, because somehow these diversity hires hold mystical magical knowledge that nobody else in the company would even dare to understand or comprehend unless they checked off some boxes first. On top of that, the term “pragmatic action” was poor wording and that’s my bad. I was trying to say something like “scientific realization” in order to attach the modernist to science. Something that is both pragmatic(able to be done practically) and part of some kind of education/training. You’ve done it, you’ve learned about it, you see others do it, that can be the modernist idea of knowledge.
Other than those two, I think every other question went over rather well, but I will still enhance them to be worded better as time goes on and as I revisit it with more of an organized “5 sets of 4 and the 2 big ‘uns” in mind. But then there comes the elephant in the room. The scoundrel who dared to question my authority and make a critique about the test. How dare they and stuff.
Jokes aside, I really like this kind of critique and it’s great that she put it into clear questions that I can firmly address. I like it when people are clear. It’s much better than that obfuscation thing the postmodernists always do when they complain about me without really having a reason other than something where they don’t like labels or they were offended that I dared to mention any category of anything. Page Zaplendam, a fellow writer, brought up 3 important questions which you can see for yourself here:

1. Where are the definitions of the terms?
2. How do you justify reducing things to something like woke?
3. How do you prevent people from rejecting pre-modernism?

I’ll address the first one to then follow through with the rest of the answers, because they all go in a long chain of “why, why, why” and “how, how, how”.
To begin the explanation, we’re going to need to establish what modernism is so that the others can be explained. It’s the word that created the reason we see a difference in aesthetics like this because this was the moment we engaged in what’s called the enlightenment. During the early 17th century and around that time, people started to remove their dependency on kingdoms and instead create nations and industry. Religion was also being questioned because scientific advancements through record keeping allows people to give better assessments on what causes something to happen in the world. The view of the world started to become more natural and so naturalism was common, as well as rationalism and empiricism. People were using logic to make their decisions and data to come to conclusions, rather than faith or scripture from prior.
During this time, the modern age, traditions were tarnished and deemed as unnecessary. Medicine allowed people to praise science instead of pray for a mystical cure. Predictions of weather with meteorology allowed people to reduce famines and starvation. Printing presses allowed books to become more common, machinery allowed more production of goods, and life went from depending on neighbors to depending on communities and global trade. This dramatic change in both lifestyle and mentality allowed art to enter the modernist art era, which is determined as art that experiments to search for new meaning and objectivity without the necessity of a deity, tradition, or the supernatural.
Mythology became psychology, alchemy became academia, and religion became fandom. Everything mentally changed under modernism to create an environment of experimentation, the romances took over, which led to the pulp adventures and existentialist works of things like noir. Weird tales brought us ideas of cosmicism, thanks to the lack of god or at least the lack of a god who cares about humanity. With this freedom from religion, the mostly liberal environment of modernism allowed people to make up their own rules, their own ideas of what’s real, and thus we were able to focus more on the individual, rather than the collective. Stephen Hicks has a great video where he lectures about how modernism came to be and what it is, but I can simplify it into the 5 categories he has on his chart.
Metaphysics: naturalism
Epistemology: empiricism and reason
Human Nature: Tabula Rasa(everything mental is gained from experience)
Ethics: individualism
politics/economics: liberal capitalism
As you can see, modernism caused this reliance on the self, but also reliance on science as a replacement for religion. It caused the worship of money, while also opening people up to other ideas thanks to the liberal mindset. The liberty to engage with other things allowed people to mingle with both good and bad ideas. This is actually why people, like James Lindsay, say that liberals caused things like Nazism and Communism to come into fruition, because the liberal is so open and accepting that they allow terrible ideas to take over the top of the social structure and they think it won’t touch them if they are on the bottom. This is also how dictators were able to trick people into treating them like a God, because the dictator convinced people that they were able to answer prayers and did this during their campaigns to get elected or during the revolution while they’re beheading their opponents in the streets.
In other words, the uprising of democracy had people rely on voting in the same way as people relied on prayers, but here it’s where we pray to a natural government and hope they do something we want.
One thing that we don’t like to realize is that colonization occurred because of a scientific superiority among the Europeans, and this scientific advancement was caused by years of wars and immense dedication to their royalty. Then there were areas they colonized that had a crazy amount of gold, such as Australia and the Aztec empire, and this abundance of gold allowed trade to skyrocket, while Indian trade and the silk road allowed wealth to spread across the globe. Diamonds and gold found in Africa, like a sick joke from God to force white people to go to such a hellhole to get the diamonds in the rough. It’s not that white people wanted to go around and rule the world. It’s that enlightened explorers and merchants wanted to make a crazy amount of money and these environments were inhabited by people who left these literal gold mines untapped, and these explorers used technology to take over.
No wonder modernism was full of that toga wearing utopia sci-fi stuff!
It’s not hard to realize why the Europeans took over entire empires with small groups of conquistadors. They had armor, guns, ships with cannons. Those Chinese must have their face red realizing they are the ones who sold them black powder. Every alchemist should feel bad and stuff that they are the reason guns were used versus the people who didn’t have guns. It was such a destructive force to use guns against savage tribes and kingdoms because it was both physical and psychological. It was like dealing with metallic robots who fired lightning from their arms and filled the area with a concealing smoke. That’s like showing a caveman a cellphone, their brains instantly melt trying to comprehend what’s going on.
So people are angry at the modernists for being… rational and empirical, and I guess being urbanized or industrialized. People are mad at capitalism for being effective and a good way to globally get along. They’re mad at liberals for being okay with race mixing. The utter nerve of such horrid actions. How dare people mix. I’ll make sure to tell my own future mixed kids that they should be ashamed of themselves for having parents who came from different parts of the Earth and that’s about it.
So modernism, do I like it?
Well, it’s not bad. A lot of my favorite stuff is modernist and usually when people say they want to go back to the old days, they point at modernism as the example. Hell, a lot of postmodernists now are saying they want to go back to modernism, and then they say they don’t, because they feel like it's superior, but they hate the idea of accepting that it’s modernist. I mean, that’s why it’s called postmodernism, it’s the thing after modernism is gone, it’s the rejection of modernism and also pre-modernism. But more on that one later.
I noticed a lot of people got mostly modernist as their answers on the test and it makes sense. Many people online, especially on alternative social media, will be actual liberals who are open to different ideas, which allows them to engage with things that both offend them and possibly something they see as evil. They’re open to having their minds changed and they are always willing to learn more because there’s a big idea on learning more and experimenting, which is something I can relate to because I’m always trying out new restaurants in my area and I don’t mind trying a genre that I’m not familiar with. For me, I have a bit of that liberal mindset because I try out a lot of things I’m not familiar with and I end up liking some stuff, but I usually stick to what I established as my firm ideas from prior.
For example, when I was a kid I hated eating beans and I refused to eat fish that wasn’t canned tuna. Now, after being more open, I love salmon and I love eating beans, which dramatically helped my nutritional intake. There is a healthiness involved with experimenting and there is also a risk factor. But if you know how to avoid dangers, I don’t see a problem with trying out something like a new genre you’re not used to, just to see if you can get into it.
I mention this because the modernist writer will experiment, but will also claim a truth that comes from rationalism, which assumes the world we live in is logical. Even if it’s chaotic and absurd, they’ll say it’s logical, because it’s predictable and we can interact with it. This allows their writing to hold to formulas through things like pulp, while also experimenting through things like weird fiction. There is repetition that happens, and this is why genres became a big thing, so the reader can tell what form of repetition they want to deal with through what they are familiar with. This caused what’s called a comfort zone, which is the state of mind where a person feels at ease because there is an abundance of familiarity and a lack of unwanted challenges. Genres create these comfort zones, and this is then where we have to talk about individualism.
Liberalism has the problem of causing individualism to slowly become sophistry and egotism. The person declaring they are the one who is to be relied on and they are the ones who make up their own rules becomes a person who can’t tell who they’re obeying. Especially if that person puts something above themselves, like race, or science, or nation, or the opinions of others through democracy. Thanks to romanticism during this modernist time, we were able to feel like we had an abundance of freedom and capability, but then barely a century later the rise of Naizsm and Communism caused people to realize that this capability is in relation to what the shadow is capable of. The darkest, most disturbing and destructive actions a person is capable of, beyond their imagination and beyond what we’d consider a “human act”.
This quick change into the most dangerous entity nearby is why I don’t trust anarchists when they say their utopia would be functional. When it comes to real life, that doesn’t work, we need a more powerful overarching thing to keep that shadow in check, and we need that entity above the human to be in check of its own shadow on top of that. And this shadow is also what causes the modernist to engage with things like dada and a hatred of art to the point where they can say the work is for them and them alone, or that all art is equal, down to where a turd on a pedestal is the same as the Mona Lisa.
The pro of modernism is a focus on the individual, which promotes movements like poetic realism and neorealism, which grants a look into everyday lives. The mundane can be put into the forefront and average people can feel like they relate, which allows the average person to buy the work. That is a great plus, and it’s why the most popular shows out there are stuff that involves soap opera style drama and an environment that is simple, like a hospital or a police station. The sitcom is a result of modernism, because only a modernist would find value in seeing a family hang around their house while you’re sitting in your house with your family watching someone else in their house with their family.
Now let’s get on with pre-modernism, after all of that introduction is said and done. Pre-modernism is everything that came before this enlightenment and this separation from God. Atheists like to say how atheism has been popular forever and they have simply been suppressed, but something crazy that they ignore is that every civilization, without ever talking to each other, before any contact with anyone else, became a religious, spiritual, civilization. We even have a name for this basic religion, called animism. This natural desire to be religious in humans comes from how we think when we are young, as well as how we think when we are not relying on science or even words.
I know this sounds strange but we think more in pictures and visions than we do with words when we don’t know how to read. Reading unlocks a vast amount of knowledge that can be gained practically instantly, but a lack of language in our ability to think causes an abundance of symbolism in our head to fill in the gaps, meaning the ability to read locks away this visual aspect. When we’re babies, we view everything as giant, threatening, and frightening. And why not? We’re this tiny soft thing that has a skull that can easily be dented and we’re unable to feed ourselves. We need someone to throw food into our mouths like bananas into the mouth of a hippo at a zoo. We have our parents doing stuff for us, and so our brain right away connects the two.
Stuff happening around us is caused by something like a parent, like an authority, like a sky father and earth mother. The father gives me brain stuff and the mother gives me food stuff. But then we’ll grow up and realize that something like the wind moves on its own, the moon comes up to replace the sun on its own, and the seasons change on their own. There’s something we can’t see that’s doing this, something beyond the sky and under the ground, and everywhere we can’t see, especially behind our eyeballs. There’s this strange image that appears behind my vision that is not of the world but of my mind, and I conjured it.
And if I didn’t conjure it, I had someone else put it in my head through a spell, in the form of words, which cast the symbol to occur in my mind. Writers in the pre-modernist age are spellcasters, wizards, that make sure something is explained about the mysterious and supernatural world that is beyond the stuff we see around us. This “rejection of the average” causes the pre-modernist writer to talk about stuff that are not only real, but hyper-real. It doesn’t speak about an individual and it’s not for an individual, because it’s attaching everyone under the same umbrella and form. This is why I find poor interpretations of mythology humorous but also rather useless.
People will look at something like Greek mythology where a god has a child with their sister and go “well, isn’t incest a bad thing?” Not only do they miss the point, but they forget that it's a god we’re talking about and it’s not a human. It’s not some biological thing standing in front of you. It’s the supernatural, it’s beyond something like biology. Or better yet when someone reads the bible and goes “why did Adam take a rib out to get a woman? Couldn’t God just make a woman without taking his rib?”
It’s like, you missed the point and you’re ignoring the importance of symbolism, and this symbolism grants all of the meaning that you’re missing from the bible. Yes, Eve is made from Adam, and yes, it takes a rib, because rib is a bone and bone is structure. A rib is near a heart, a protector of heart. Heart is courage, love, emotions, stuff that makes our blood pump. Blood is a humor based on air, and air is one of the 4 elements. The connection goes on and on and on, because this mythology is all connected together into one giant story that goes beyond the words stated in the story. Each tiny noun or verb means way more than it lets up to mean. I’ve been studying mythology for a while, and really trying to look into them before I say anything about them, and there is so much inner history with mythology that’s both present and reachable, but it’s practically endless with how everything connects.
And at the same time, all of this is essential, of a form, symbolic, and objective.
This relation to religion in pre-modernism causes the definition to be something like “the art form that depicts hyper-reality in an objective truth that involves the supernatural as a source of the natural and as the source of truth.
Stephen Hicks puts the politics of the pre-modernist as feudalism, but it’s more like monarchy, where you believe that there should be a king, because someone has a family line that was sacred enough to treat like one. In pre-modernism, we had ancestor worship in every culture, because your family line was important to keeping your existence relevant. This is because everything in the pre-modern age involved titles, which were granted by an authority, and many times this authority is a god or an ancestor.
Your title within your family is in relation to your family members and your last name determines your family’s title for others to recognize. If someone was a smith, they would get the last name smith, like say John the smith just becomes John Smith, and they will endow their established trade to their next of kin. So if the son of John Smith wants to make a living, he’s going to be a smith as well. There is this lineage and family business that is treated seriously, because if you step out of this title, you’ll have to create your own. People could do that by entering a trade or a guild, by learning from others, from gaining a title after being born a bastard, or whatever they could to get a title.
But the key factor is that title is important to the pre-modernist. What’s even more important is form, because this religious mentality creates the environment that perfection is possible. A metaphysical manifestation separate from the material world that is able to be aimed towards and sought after, even if unable to be reached. This was well portrayed in characters like Jesus, which Christianity dedicated itself to fulfill the traits of Jesus, due to Christianity being a religion where people follow the teachings of Jesus.
I would say that every religion had their own type of Jesus, the perfect form that someone or something has to uphold and look up to as inspiration.
Later on, alchemy came out of the prototype phase and started to connect all of these religions and symbols with each other to create more overarching symbolism that went for more core ideas. At this point, people could only argue against combinations and where something is in a hierarchy, rather than the validity of the claim of something like a single god or a creator. Sects of religions were made in order to determine different end goals, or different ideas in how a ritual should be done, or whether something like a church is important for worship, and these were the biggest sources of dispute possible.
You either followed God's will or you didn’t, and if you didn’t, you were a heathen. Heathens are sent to the bad place, believers go to the good place. We have a supernatural aspect of our body, beyond our body, beside our body, that went there for us, usually in the sense of a soul or spirit. The mind is an intermediary between the body and spirit that allows communication between the two at all times. This was usually depicted with gods like Psyche or Hermes or any other messenger god.
The gods would speak to us with omens and with us using clairvoyance. Any pattern in front of us or up in the stars could be used as a means to decipher a supernatural message. This message was easily able to repeat itself because there was an objective meaning to everything, which is why something like Zodiacs are constantly watched even to this day. Pre-modernist art retains this tradition of using mythology and symbolism to depict truths about the world. Romanticism was an attempt to return to this truth telling style during the modernist era, but Romanticism was absent of the religious aspect and was more of something like a neo-alchemical way of handing stories, where symbols were kept basic and for individual progress instead of a collective one.
A big part of pre-modernism is collectivism, especially the collective unconscious, which Jung coined later on when referring to his more pre-modernist analysis of psychology that heavily relied on alchemy and mythology. We used mythology to say something of value, with a universal or at least human level of objectivity, and the only way to miss the message is to deny that symbolism exists for them. Or at least, your level of symbolism in your interpretation would have to be so low resolution that it misses every point entirely and has zero context as to why mythology is important in the first place.
Mythology grants the idea that our world holds order, while the modernist idea is more about how the world is chaotic and we hold order to shape the world better. Fables grant the idea that particular personalities do particular things, while modernism declares that things change or can be grey and shows how. The black and white morality of the pre-modernist merged into grey once modernism kicked in, because there is the lack of theism under modernism.
We’re half way through the explanation and now we come to postmodernism.
Pre-modernism establishes that the supernatural causes order to cause truth, modernism changed that to say a secular natural world causes chaos to have us find truth. So what does postmodernist do to change all of that?
It rejects both and says both pre-modernism and modernism are wrong, and instead says everything that can be perceived is subjective and the objective is unknown to us. Stephen Hicks says in his video that postmodernists are really intelligent and well read into an abundance of stuff, and he’s impressed by that. I would have to disagree with him because it’s not like they read everything they did in order to understand it. They read everything and continue searching because they intend on claiming it’s not true, and use their personal interpretation to claim such. It’s very much like when a person studies mythology to then say “you know, the gods committing incest and magically transforming is really weird.”
Before I get deep into postmodernism, I would like to explain the concept of realism. Realism, in both philosophy and art, is to depict a thing as how it truthfully is. There is accuracy, there is something there that really exists, and it has attributes that causes it to really exist. Both modernism and pre-modernism have this as an axiom. Postmodernism on the other hand is ANTI-realism.
You cannot believe in something being “real” as a postmodernist because to claim something is real is to claim an objective truth, which a postmodernist is allergic to doing. They are unable to claim anything as true, because there is no proof for them to use, thus any statements they make must be an opinion and any statement they see must be perceived as an opinion as well. In all honesty, I have trouble finding postmodernists who go this far down the rabbit hole. All of them focus on subjectivity, but they’ll still try to tell others that things can be real in a colloquial way that lets them blend in with modernists. It’s hard to get people to follow you when you claim things aren’t real, so there is a form of deception and contradiction that occurs, but it’s also acceptable to the postmodernist.
This is because postmodernists don’t care about logic, and anything they want to claim as “true” is based on a social subjectivism that can also be considered an overton window that shows them what is acceptable to say and what isn’t. A lot of them try to push it, others try to blend in with it, with the intensity depending on how far they want to push their deconstructionism and reductionism. For example, phrases like “we’re all just stardust floating around” is a way for the postmodernist to seem deep with their reductionism, but it’s actually their way of saying they are nihilistic while trying to sound deep and poetic.
Stephen Hicks does have an amazing point in his presentation where he says truth no longer matters to the postmodernist and what does matter is power. That kind of concept comes from Nietzsche’s will to power (which is why Nietzsche is considered a proto-postmodernist, one who helped birth it into existence) and Marx’s historical materialism. The thought that human labor forms the material basis of society, and this idea being spread out into every 3rd world country(aka communist country during the cold war) means that a big chunk of the world is convinced of this concept of power through labor and power through capital that’s seen as “stolen labor” when it’s a bourgeoisie.
This leaning into Marxist terminology, thanks to communists and hippies, causes postmodernist politics to be considered leftist, and exclusively leftist. There is no way for a right wing postmodernist to even occur because the right winger believes in a truth through natural rights and there is no way to remove that aspect. This is why Stephen Hicks calls the postmodernist political and economic idea socialist, which what he really means is leftist. Although, socialist works a bit more for the political aspect since socialism is a wonky word that means whatever the socialist wants it to mean.
They think the worker owns the means of production and that some form of social relevancy should happen and the rest is dependent on what they want to advocate for. Not surprisingly, this socialist aspect quickly turned into syndicalism and later corporatism when relying on the government to enforce this social power upon the masses, also known as a cult of personality. The cult leader, or leaders, tell everyone that they have power, they tell everyone that they’re special, the people don’t question it because they think it’s a common opinion, and so the cult grows unrestrained. We see this at all times when people will both hold water for a politician for any little thing and also attack their opposition for any little thing, no matter how much of a double standard or fallacy they apply to their advocacy.
To the postmodernist, advocacy is labor geared towards power, with advocacy being the only thing you can do to socially stay relevant.
When it comes to postmodernist media, the key idea is exploitation, because the goal is to get as many views as possible and break as many boundaries as possible. Modernist rating systems are pushed and pushed constantly into exploitation to the point where new ratings are made and R rated material becomes the new norm. The grindhouse is a common place and is normalized, even though before these would be considered taboo, because the way the overton window moved more towards the left through their advocacy. The leftist postmodernist demands power as the social structure and so they demand power and are slowly granted it over time. But there is a bit of a weird thing that happens between how Hicks and I see postmodernism.
In his chart, he labels postmodernism as collectivist and egalitarian. I see this as a bit misleading since the leftist is not really for collectivism in the same way as a pre-modernist would claim we’re all connected. The postmodernist believes that we’re all connected in how we’re all trapped in our own subjective constructions, as if we’re all islands in this massive chain of islands and the water between us is the subjective separation.
For example, let’s say I look at a dog and another person looks at a dog. We both see the dog but the dog is one dog for me and another dog for them and there is this supposed infinite number of dogs who make up this single entity that takes up the space where the perceived dog resides. And not just an infinite number of dogs, but infinite number of things between what the dog is made of, with an infinite number of those for each smaller thing. I guess, to him, that’s collectivism, and the egalitarian thing comes from how leftist demand that people are to be treated equal, as well as all art to be treated equal.
Just like dada, which was a proto-postmodernist art movement, the postmodernist thinks that all art is equal, with the Mona Lisa holding the same aesthetic value as a turd on a pedestal. This allows the postmodernist to use juxtaposition to combine something of high regard with something of low regard, like say having classical music play during a moment where someone is being tortured in a grindhouse way. Or maybe another example is like how Tarantino combines low quality exploitation movies with high quality dialogue that people praise for its realism and tension. This is why surrealism became popular under postmodernism, because surrealism juxtaposes a high concept symbol with nonsensical low concept literal images or events.
Another aspect of postmodernism is the idea that art and real life has merged into a type of hyperreality that blurs the line where life and art meet. People record their lives online and turn that into media, thus turning even things like talking about people who are in media into a form of media itself(aka Hollywood gossip stuff and youtube drama).
Without much of a message or objective symbolism, a lot of postmodernist media focuses on playfulness, because messing with things is all that there’s left as a means of entertainment and media making. Personal interpretation as the only means of experiencing causes the postmodernist to aim for open interpretation work, using vague wording and dog whistles to hide intents that they believe a common audience wouldn’t like, but select circles would catch. And with this demand for social power came the rise of corporate media, where corporations crank out stuff with self made trends and control groups who guide the corporation towards more money, thus more power.
There is also a combination of media, usually in the form of merchandising, so that a form of media will still be advertised and thought about, even when not engaged with the media directly. For example, GI Joe started out as a toy for kids. Then it became a comic and a show for kids. Now it’s a movie series for kids. Transformers, He-Man, I think even Gundam. These things aim for sales first and then plan the story after, because it’s all one big marketing campaign. There’s nothing in these that try to say what is true, they simply try to say things that will have people think they agree with it, or at least can’t argue against it to where they disengage with the product that’s being sold.
This has caused postmodernist media to become both highly marketable but also highly forgettable. Things easily get outdated even if the tech level stays consistent because of intertextuality, which is the relationship one media has with another to grant the user of intertextuality with relevancy that can have the audience understand the reference. This is a fancy way of saying something like an inside joke or a typical reference like a meme that we see online. If you ever want to understand this one, just think of any Channel Awesome reviewer. They will try to make jokes that reference something in media, probably something they reviewed prior, in order to keep the dedicated fans in the circle of attention and make the new fans try to keep up with this intensifying requirement of knowing jargon.
Intertextuality can also be seen as a sort of specialized culture within a franchise or company or genre or just stuff that is similar, so that the people who are of the fandom can all enjoy speaking some special language with each other and keep out the people who don’t know about their niche idioms and references.
This combination of reality and media, along with removing objectivity from the equation, with high and low arts being combined through playfulness and for marketing, is why our media is the way it is today. It’s made like fast food, doesn’t offer anything for the brain to work with, and is actually more for our brains to turn off if anything. People like Ray Bradburry saw this issue with TV and determined it was going to turn us into Idiocracy, which he explored in his book Fahrenheit 451. People are indulged and distracted by the idiot tube, they stop questioning things, books start being called evil, the government enacts a war against books, all people have left are things that keep them dumb, and then they can’t even see a war that’s happening all around them and in their own backyard.
The benefit of postmodernism is that it can appear more creative and people get entertained. That’s about it. No more feeling like you need to tell the truth, now you can make a story about whatever. The only benefit quickly becomes the main problem with it: it’s a bad influence. Postmodernists can only deconstruct and so they’re never pleased.
We see this all the time with Channel Awesome reviewers where they will miss the point of everything in a movie, like say Last Action Hero, and even though Last Action Hero is a postmodernist deconstruction of action movies, the reviewer will scream and holler about how the movie can’t be taken seriously. Then when they are challenged on the integrity of their review, they will spin it around and say they were just being meta and knew it was satire all along, that nobody should take any review of theirs seriously or as their actual opinion.
Or better yet, a postmodernist fan will chime in and speak for the reviewer, like when I said Spoony’s review of Final Fantasy 8, yet another deconstruction work that people were conflicted on, was misguided and wrong. A bunch of fans came in and said “Well, that’s not his REAL opinion. He didn’t REALLY say what he wanted to during the months he spent working on that review.”
I guess the point of postmodernism is to NOT say what you mean. Because how can they? That would address there is an objective idea in their head of what they mean, and that can’t happen under postmodernism. So you’re left with this endless chain of people trying to make a satire or make fun of something that is already making fun of something and that thing is already not to be taken seriously, and… you get the picture.
But then, recently, a sort of organized idea sprouted out from postmodernism. This idea that everything is both power and subjective, while also being a social construct, coagulated into a unification of something under what is called intersectionality. In 1989, Kimberly Chrenshaw coined the term, which already was working off of ideas during postmodernism such as second wave feminism and critical race theory. Through the idea that extreme egalitarianism is the way, in a subjective way, these defenders of the marginalized demanded that media should cater to whoever they deem as marginalized.
This branch of postmodernism is known as woke.
For wokeness, there isn’t much of a history or even aesthetic choice to shift through, but there is an awful lot of jargon to explain so that people know what I’m talking about. So for the majority of the woke explanation, I will be explaining the special words used that the woke will both claim are super important to know, but will also refrain from defining because they want to keep it on the down low. They mostly want to do that because they know their reasoning doesn’t make any sense and because it’s self contradictory, but that’s okay for them because they are, by their own admittance, anti-logic and “there is no real wokeness”.
Actually, before I explain the jargon, I want to get into that “there is no such thing as woke” talking point they always do. This is the same thing as saying “I want everyone to do x and there is no x”. Or when they are less radical, they will say something like “Everyone should do x, but nobody has done x yet.” But recently it’s been more like “This thing in the media has always been x, which is why we need it to be more x”.
As you can see, the narrative is always changing and they are always telling people to do something. This is the opposite of postmodernism in how it’s authoritarian, but is part of postmodernism because of the subjective aspect, as well as the neo-dada form of anti-art. The “art” of woke art is meant to express representation, and this representation is supposed to be of a group, and this group is supposed to look a particular way, absent of any stereotypes, negative or positive, and absent of any grand narratives, pre-modernist or modernist.
Therefore, all we’re left with is… appropriation and exploitation of marginalized groups.
Something tells me they didn’t think this through. It’s almost as if their goal is to be the thing they claim to fight against, but they don’t want to be called racist or sexist or whatever phobic because they don’t want to lose social power. This enforcement of an ideology, an ideology that tries to equally exploit for money, is put under the acronym DEI: Diversity, equity, and inclusion. This is a profitable business to get into, because DEI is estimated to have corporations annually spend $17 billion on DEI programs and organizations by the year 2027. In 2003, it was estimated that corporations spent $8 billion. In 2022, that number was recorded at $9 billion.
What do these numbers mean? It means companies are wasting money on this and they’re losing money after enacting woke policies.
When we combine wokeness with the socialist/Marxist mentality of the postmodernist, we end up with a constant drain of capital on the end of the media maker. The one making the art LOSES MONEY when they go woke, which is why we say “go woke, go broke.” There is no intention on making money with wokeness. This is why governments added wokeness to what is called the ESG score, which is a score that governments use to subsidize companies that follow things like climate change advocacy, DEI, and following whatever regulations a country puts in like mask regulations.
Follow these things, get closer to the “leader” score, and you get more money from the government. This is why companies don’t care when they lose customers, because at the end of the day, they are kept afloat by tax dollars. Then the people in charge of these companies buy the lowered stock that was hit by a controversy, and they have it go back up between woke projects. This is why the CEO of a corporation loves woke backlash, as long as they can pretend they had nothing to do with the woke decision. This is why, for example, Budlight decided they had nothing to do with hiring Dylan Mulvaney AFTER the boycotts worked, instead of, you know, while hiring him to be a spokesperson for the beer on April Fools day of all days.
So the go broke part is for the company itself, while the people using wokeness for their benefit are grifting and taking short term gains. Same thing was for something like BLM, which is an organization that revealed the money donated for the purpose of helping black communities was instead used to buy the founders mansions. The idea that wokeness brings in the cash and it can be called “woke capitalism” is absurd due to the lack of longevity the concept has. This is like calling a stolen item that gets sold at a pawn shop “illegal capitalism”. It doesn’t mean much, and it’s just trying to tie capitalism in with something negative, which is hilarious since wokeness is meant for the left.
With that out of the way, I’m going to get into the jargon, which will allow us to see some of the “philosophy” behind woke. The first one is “critical theory” which is what everything under wokeness is based on to enact a policy. This is how they choose who is marginalized and who isn’t. The term critical race theory originated in the 1980s through discussions about laws because some people decided that equality was not enough. It’s not enough that you can treat a person as an equal, like how a liberal does, because somehow a person born in 1980 is influenced by their ancestry from 1480. Judith Butler helped popularize critical queer theory, which lost the critical part once that aspect was seen as bad, thanks to critical race theory.
They kept all of the critical theory roots, but they removed the word critical because they don’t want to appear… critical. This also happened when Lisa Tuttle popularized the current form of feminist theory, where they remove the critical part because of the stigma they know the word has. No matter what, deception and omission must be used to get their agenda through, because that’s all they know how to do. They cannot get power unless they deceive people into giving them their power. And I find that a little odd since critical theory is a Marxist theory that came from the Frankfurt School from a man named Max Horkheimer, way back in 1937.
Max’s idea was that the enlightenment was a mistake, making him anti-modernist, but the postmodernists of this school of thought will still insist that there is something modernist about critical theory. They claim it’s because Marx was objective because Marx thought something objective is whatever is practiced, yet nothing he claims that is practiced was ever true, so it’s sort of a strange way to misdirect people into thinking that his appeal to his own version of rationalism was somehow actual rationalism. In other words, it’s wordplay. But, we can still say something like his attachment to science being a key element of his ideology, with science trying to be used to determine the natural world, is sort of modernist.
And this is the first step into getting confused as to what anything is, which is why people need a clear explanation as to what something like a modernist is. A good way to explain if something is actually modernist is if you can ask a writer if they believe in marxism and objectivity. If they say no, then we can see that Marxism appeals to the postmodernist in a way that is by design, not by accident. This is why Jordan Peterson is forced to call actual Marxists “neo-Marxists” and “cultural marxists”, because of the constant wordplay that is used by the very same Marxists.
Now, I want to harp on Marxism due to the fact that every single critical theory that the woke adopted is a Marxist theory. Critical theory was based on Marxism and critical theory declared that cultural equality was required in order to prevent fascism. It determined that individuals are not the ones behind social problems, but instead these problems were caused by social structures and cultural bias. What are these problems and what are the solutions, you may ask?
Well, critical theory doesn’t have any of that covered. In fact, the goal was to NOT cover any of those and to just say “social problems are at the social level” and that’s it. Congratulations, theory complete. The social thing is about society and society is how individuals interact. So it’s not the individual’s fault, it’s how they act with each other that’s the problem. So the theory is saying we need to change our act in order to solve the problems, and this was followed by the feminists who say we need to help the women get up in life. This was followed by the CRTists who said we need to help certain races get up in life. This was followed by the Queer Theorists who said we need to help the LGBT get up in life. There is the body positivity, the handicapped, the “don’t slut shame me" movement, and the list goes on and on.
Now we’re in a world where all of these things are in our media and forced into our media because somehow critical theory is the new normal, but you’re not allowed to say it’s forced. If you say it’s forced, some people might reject it and then the enforcers lose power, so they will always say “this is how media always was”. This is how we now have people claiming that ancient civilizations were pro-trans and pro-gay, even though they weren’t and I thought the entire point in CHANGING society is because these social problems are ingrained into society?
This is how the woke say one thing and then mean another. They want the power, but claim the power is given to someone else, while they take the power for themselves. Something like gender is told to be super important and something even worth committing suicide over, but then the lady who made up queer theory says that gender is performative, meaning that it doesn’t matter. Feminism is told to be super important because this is how we can help women become equal, and then we’re told by the person who made current feminist theory that “you’re not born a woman, you become one, even if you were born a male.”
This “equality of power” that the critical theorists said they wanted quickly turned into an “equality of babbling”. Nothing under wokeness makes any sense, and neither does the origin of the term woke. It is meant to mean a person is awake, that they were sleepwalking through life and now they are aware that bad things are happening in society. What are these bad things? Well, whatever you can make up and convince others is bad, since it’s all subjective. If someone steals a VCR and they are black, you can say the police who arrested the thief are evil because they are oppressing a desperate black man who “wouldn’t have stolen if society just treated him better.”
Of course, this implies that rapists only rape because they weren’t treated well enough by society, but only of that rapist is a particular skin color. The woke quickly tie the “need to rape” with skin color, and then call others racists. Actually, now that I’m on the race topic, let’s lay out CRT and how they view race from their supposed “law related origins”.
CRT determines that race doesn’t actually exist, that white people created race to then create racism. I’ll say that again to make sure if you caught that. CRT, a belief about how race works, claims that race doesn’t exist. But then it blames a particular race because… it’s not racist. Did I mention that this belief is anti-evidence and anti-reason? Yes, they do not want reason or evidence to be used for laws, because these things are biased. Instead they want storytelling from the marginalized person, who is called black, even though they don’t believe black as a race exists. This storytelling can be something like “I was walking down the street and I saw a police officer and I felt fear. I should not feel fear. That means the police officer is racist because I’m black and they made me fear.”
To make it even worse, they determine that color blindness from laws causes racist laws to form, because discrimination can occur from certain laws like murder rates, drug use, and theft. Something like being on time to work is considered racist, because a clock is a construction by white people to keep black people down. There’s always something designed by the white man to “keep black people down” because they believe white people only have power because they can keep others down. This is why they advocate to pull all of the non-whites up by forcing white people to hire non-white people into roles in movies or something like a job or using affirmative action to force black people into college classes by reducing their requirements.
Apparently, when you go to the military, the goal is not to have a good soldier but to allow more women to get in by reducing the standard for them. The goal of getting black people into college is to reduce the requirements for them so that they can get in, while increasing the requirements for Asians because there are too many Asians in college. But if we look at media, and only the US media, we can see there is a lack of Asians, so Asians are forced into film sets. Yes, there are plenty of Asians in, you know, Asian countries, soaking up all of the film time, but they don’t count.
In fact, they don’t count because white people don’t watch them as much, so now we have to have an enforcement of Asians being translated into English for western audiences to indulge in Asian culture, which is why Netflix transfers money from the west to the east and tries to get a bunch of Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Thai content out. A lot of this Asian content is also LGBT, because even though these Asian countries don’t care for such content, the west must believe that the east is super open about it. There will be something like a comedy about a pregnant male that comes from Korea, and the west will take that and say it’s empowering because it fights against gender norms.
Meanwhile, the story is just a postmodernist joke about how it would be funny if men felt pregnancy pain. And it’s because there was a postmodernist comedy called Junior which had the joke “wouldn’t it be funny if a big buff Austrian dude was pregnant?”
My point is that wokeness is just appropriation, through and through. If it’s ancient bigotry, they will say it’s woke. If it’s modernist liberalism, they’ll say it’s woke. If it’s postmodernism making fun of wokeness, they’ll say it’s woke. No matter what, they will spin something to call it woke, just so that they can say liberalism is evil and equality is evil. Their goal is to have an equal outcome, which is their excuse to give certain groups more money and fame, all while ignoring merit. The very idea of rejecting merit as a qualifier is the reason woke media is designed to lose money, and is also a way to tie woke to postmodernism.
I think this is enough explanation of the jargon for now. Not sure if I missed anything, but I think enough of a point is made on that part to have anyone understand how wokeness works. The metaphysics is the same as postmodernist, it’s all subjective. The epistemology is through lived experience because of the storytelling that’s deemed as superior to reason. The ethics is social justice, because they demand equity, aka equal outcome. The politics are marxist, meaning their goal is to remove capitalism because capitalism is an evil product of liberalism. And finally the aesthetic is what I would call anti-art.
I guess I might be able to explain the aesthetics, but it’s rather loose. The problem is that art to the woke is just propaganda. The don’t really give a story or plot with woke media, instead they just take something generic and roll with it, assuming they even give it a plot. For example, there is a woke comic from Marvel(since every comic from them is woke now) where a superhero gets stopped by a cop for being native american. This female, possibly lesbian, native american uses her powers to have the cop realize he’s racist by mind controlling him into thinking he’s racist.
Work with me here…
So the cop is at his house later and decides that he can’t live with himself as a racist person, so he shoots himself in the head. The native american woman watches him from afar and goes “my work here is done” and considers herself a hero for the day. Comic book issue over. So the plot of that story was “super hero uses powers to make a random cop kill himself because racism.”
There is nothing in the story we can call true, nothing we can call interesting, nothing can be called entertaining, nothing can be called useful, nothing can be called anything other than utterly pointless. But the point was to say “racism exists. Stay woke.” That’s the message. That’s the reason an artist spent a month working on a comic and that’s why a company invested money into it to sell it to people who decided to pay money for it and read it. I have no idea who paid money to read that, but I can safely say it wasn’t that many people.
The goal is not to have people buy the product, it’s to simply say the product exists and point to it and go “see, a company put money into that group.” This is kind of like an updated version of “everyone gets a trophy” but instead of everyone, it’s the non-whites, non-cis, non-straights, and non-males. And instead of a trophy you get a product people don’t want to buy.
This is why I consider any answer as woke in my test as an indication of a person being woke. You really do need to jump through a bunch of hurdles to get stuck into this kind of mentality and the only question that people got woke was the one where lived experience is the answer. I think a better term might be anecdotal evidence, because like I said, the woke will reject reason and evidence and instead focus on storytelling, with storytelling here meaning you’re saying what you thought happened through your subjective opinion, and this can be anything you want it to be.
Hell, I can say something like “I felt like a unicorn” and that is considered a lived experience, because somehow I know what a unicorn feels like and somehow you now need to believe I did. So maybe anecdotal is the proper term to use, but then the woke will avoid that one since they know it looks like a fallacy and they can’t socially bring themselves to be stigmatized like that when they think it’s not acceptable. So it’s one of those things where I can either have one wording that causes a false positive or the other wording that will cause a false negative. But, then again, if someone is woke already, they would fail other questions anyway, so maybe I can put that one as not really important to worry about.
So there you have it, definitions and grave detail into all 4 types. I’m sure someone will conjure up more questions and I’m sure a postmodernist will say I’m wrong about everything, but at that point, I did my part so it’s not my problem.
Onto the next section that follows the next question: How do you justify reducing things to something like woke?
Reductionism is when you take something that is complex, like a story, and reduce it to particular fundamentals to provide a sufficient explanation. This is something like when a story gets reduced to a genre when you label it with a genre, because the genre is fundamental. This can also be something like calling yourself a Christian when you believe in the teachings of Christ. Sure, you have other qualities about yourself, but this can be an explanation into something that explains very quickly because it broadens the scope. But the question is HOW do I do this with something like woke, or modernism.
Simple: you look at the definition and go “ah, I see, that’s what it’s doing.”
Pre-modernism and modernism are objective, postmodernism and woke are subjective. Already these two groups are split by a single key factor. I can instantly say woke is a terrible storytelling way of thinking because the goal is to treat merit and superior quality as oppressive, so there is no possible way of making a good story that’s woke. It’s, by design, unable to be good. If we take postmodernism, we can say that it instantly rejects telling the truth, so it must make something up with exploitation and it’s going to be like fast food for the brain. It is, by design, unable to stand the test of time.
But then if we take something like modernism, we can see a truth is there, even if it tries to be individual, because then a guide based on personalities can be seen, and a way might be unlocked. This is why a modernist story is considered classic, and we look up to it as inspiration. Pre-modernism is as primitive and societally significant as you can get, to the point where it’s part of history books as a mythology. We base entire cultures around this type of media and we follow through with our daily life by using this type of media as a guide. In fact, pre-modernism is found IN postmodernism by accident when a postmodernist tries to appropriate, which is why we can find something like alchemy and Gnosticism in a postmodernist movie like The Matrix. There are modernist concepts like The Rabbit Hole in The Matrix, despite The Matrix trying to subvert it and reject it.
So like a genre, the direction of your modernist variant is reliant on both intention and focus, rather than if something is there. I can have a cockroach crawl into my cake when I’m baking it, that doesn’t mean cockroach is part of the recipe. So the goal of the test is to see what kind of recipe people are following and we can determine what kind of cook they are in how they view recipes. There is no danger of reductionism because reductionism is used to prevent dangers. In fact, in the most ironic way possible, to claim reductionism is dangerous here is to use dangerous reductionism to make such a claim, because it reduces the entire process to the idea of dangerous.
Now for the last question: How do you prevent people from rejecting pre-modernism?
Page has determined that if you claim form = function = truth, then you have caused pre-modernism to be the same as woke. As I’ve explained, they aren’t the same thing. Yes both are based on religions, with wokeness being based on Gnosticism, which is to self worship and deem yourself as the true god that is imprisoned in your body by the demiurge, but that isn’t the same thing as “telling an actual truth”.
Gnosticism is sophistry mixed with satanism. I always forget the term and can never find it, but it’s the belief that you’re alone and you’re talking to yourself even when you talk to others. This is how people get trapped in an echo chamber, because all the can do is hear themselves talk and tackle their own ideas of what could be wrong, which requires them accepting they could be wrong, and if they don’t accept that possibility, then everything goes in one ear and out the other. They start to follow a script, become an NPC, and all they can do is become violent once the script runs dry.
Can the pre-modernist become the same thing? Absolutely not. The benefit of a pre-modernist is that we don’t believe we rule the world. We understand that the world is in control, the supernatural controls the world, and we are below all of that as measly humans. We are the cameraman, not the director. Better yet, we are the audience watching a live feed with a cameraman controlling what we get to see, and we’re not involved in any of the production. This acceptance of humility allows the pre-modernist to seek truth, which is how a mythology is born in the first place. The only valid criticism is that the subjects become so grand and universal that they are basic and unable to really tackle the more personal and social issues that modernism tackles.
This basic and broadness is what Page considered “unentertaining”. But during a later exchange, during the making of this response, I found something fascinating. Page’s definition of entertaining is contradictory, because she believes it is objective in the fact that entertainment exists, but WHAT WE SEE as entertaining is subjective. So the complaint that something could be unentertaining isn’t valid, because it doesn’t mean anything if it’s subjective. It’s like saying a traditional dish doesn’t taste good and that’s why that traditional dish is bad to limit people to it.
Well, what if every good dish becomes traditional because people see it as tasty? I am not limited to my own personal tradition, I can enjoy another person’s tradition. I can eat sushi as a German who loves bratwurst and sauerkraut. I can eat pad thai and I can eat sweet and sour pork. I can eat baba ghanoush and shepherd’s pie.
Do you know why I can eat these? Because they are all food that is made of nutrients that people ate since the dawn of time. My human body needs stuff that humans eat for nutrients and there is a select number of nutrients that I need per day because it’s the stuff my body uses. Same goes for storytelling and the specific things my brain will use to gain wisdom and intelligence. The pre-modernist believes that there are these end points that we can address and say “this is the form, this is the end point, can’t go past that.”
The modernist claims “this is scientifically why we can’t go past a certain point, but we might get more information later that will allow us to pass that point.”
Then the postmodernist says “that point is a made up line, the limitation is made up, and the idea you’re in a particular position is also made up, so just mess with things and call them different things.”
Then the woke say “That point doesn’t exist but it’s oppressing me.”
As you can see, the pre-modernist is the most coherent because it’s the most accepting of how things are. I think what Page misunderstood is that some people think a form is what humans determine the form to be, and the form is left as that. Wrong. Form is to reach an endpoint and we cannot physically reach this endpoint, meaning the form will only be in our mental state through symbolism when we’re trying to think of such. Thus, symbolism is the key factor, and all you have to do is make the symbol more clear.
What really struck me as odd is that Page also declared the Bible as entertaining, meaning a pre-modernist work is the prime example of entertaining while her rejection of pre-modernism is because it is not entertaining. I cannot make any sense of that contradiction other than maybe Page believing that media being full of lies is entertainment and that’s not allowed under pre-modernism, which doesn’t mean anything to me.
That’s like going “well, your philosophy doesn’t allow contradictions and uses only logic, so it’s not a good philosophy.”
At that point, we simply have to call such a person postmodernist, because only a postmodernist would demand such a thing.
What am I going to do now that the test was tested? Well, I am sure I am going to make 5 sets of 4 questions for sure, with the 2 overarching questions added in the beginning and end. I will also try to use that google forms thing so that it can be a real test. When I get a website up for my company, I will have the test as part of the entrance exam to join the club. Pre-modernists are preferred, modernists are welcomed, postmodernists are tolerated, and woke are excluded. Sorry, we don’t allow such hateful people into the club. We like to work with normal functional people, and the woke do not meet either requirement.
And I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I am working on the test to have writers see what they KNOW about writing. That one is going to be a bit harder to put together, since I was thinking of getting written answers rather than multiple choice. I think the hardest part with that one will be figuring out how to work in creativity, since that one is tricky to sense if it’s intentional or accidental. But, like always, if I need help, I’ll ask.
Till next time.

Hey homies, a mate of mine works for a fancy furniture maker. He says he has unlimited american white oak offcuts that have been dried to a furniture grade.
My question is, would off cuts or this be good to make staves out of to "oak" my spirits?
I've heard it has to be seasoned. I'm wondering if the furniture grade stuff would be good.
As a little bonus if anyone's in Western Australia I'd be happy to give some away if he can get me heaps like he thinks if it's any good.

LESSON 161. Give me your blessing, holy Son of God.
Today we practice differently, and take a stand against our anger, that our fears may disappear and offer room to love. Here is salvation in the simple words in which we practice with today’s idea. Here is the answer to temptation which can never fail to welcome in the Christ where fear and anger had prevailed before. Here is Atonement made complete, the world passed safely by and Heaven now restored. Here is the answer of the Voice for God. Complete abstraction is the natural condition of the mind. But part of it is now unnatural. It does not look on everything as one. It sees instead but fragments of the whole, for only thus could it invent the partial world you see. The purpose of all seeing is to show you what you wish to see. All hearing but brings to your mind the sounds it wants to hear.
Thus were specifics made. And now it is specifics we must use in practicing. We give them to the Holy Spirit, that He may employ them for a purpose which is different from the one we gave to them. Yet He can use but what we made, to teach us from a different point of view, so we can see a different use in everything.
One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth. Yet do these thoughts make clear the meaning of creation? Do these words bring perfect clarity with them to you? What can they seem to be but empty sounds; pretty, perhaps, correct in sentiment, yet fundamentally not understood nor understandable. The mind that taught itself to think specifically can no longer grasp abstraction in the sense that it is all-encompassing. We need to see a little, that we learn a lot.
It seems to be the body that we feel limits our freedom, makes us suffer, and at last puts out our life. Yet bodies are but symbols for a concrete form of fear. Fear without symbols calls for no response, for symbols can stand for the meaningless. Love needs no symbols, being true. But fear attaches to specifics, being false.
Bodies attack, but minds do not. This thought is surely reminiscent of our text, where it is often emphasized. This is the reason bodies easily become fear’s symbols. You have many times been urged to look beyond the body, for its sight presents the symbol of love’s “enemy” Christ’s vision does not see. The body is the target for attack, for no one thinks he hates a mind. Yet what but mind directs the body to attack? What else could be the seat of fear except what thinks of fear?
Hate is specific. There must be a thing to be attacked. An enemy must be perceived in such a form he can be touched and seen and heard, and ultimately killed. When hatred rests upon a thing, it calls for death as surely as God’s Voice proclaims there is no death. Fear is insatiable, consuming everything its eyes behold, seeing itself in everything, compelled to turn upon itself and to destroy.
Who sees a brother as a body sees him as fear’s symbol. And he will attack, because what he beholds is his own fear external to himself, poised to attack, and howling to unite with him again. Mistake not the intensity of rage projected fear must spawn. It shrieks in wrath, and claws the air in frantic hope it can reach to its maker and devour him.
This do the body’s eyes behold in one whom Heaven cherishes, the angels love and God created perfect. This is his reality. And in Christ’s vision is his loveliness reflected in a form so holy and so beautiful that you could scarce refrain from kneeling at his feet. Yet you will take his hand instead, for you are like him in the sight that sees him thus. Attack on him is enemy to you, for you will not perceive that in his hands is your salvation. Ask him but for this, and he will give it to you. Ask him not to symbolize your fear. Would you request that love destroy itself? Or would you have it be revealed to you and set you free?
Today we practice in a form we have attempted earlier. Your readiness is closer now, and you will come today nearer Christ’s vision. If you are intent on reaching it, you will succeed today. And once you have succeeded, you will not be willing to accept the witnesses your body’s eyes call forth. What you will see will sing to you of ancient melodies you will remember. You are not forgot in Heaven. Would you not remember it?
Select one brother, symbol of the rest, and ask salvation of him. See him first as clearly as you can, in that same form to which you are accustomed. See his face, his hands and feet, his clothing. Watch him smile, and see familiar gestures which he makes so frequently. Then think of this: What you are seeing now conceals from you the sight of one who can forgive you all your sins; whose sacred hands can take away the nails which pierce your own, and lift the crown of thorns which you have placed upon your bleeding head. Ask this of him, that he may set you free:
Give me your blessing, holy Son of God. I would behold you with the eyes of Christ, and see my perfect sinlessness in you.
And He will answer Whom you called upon. For He will hear the Voice for God in you, and answer in your own. Behold him now, whom you have seen as merely flesh and bone, and recognize that Christ has come to you. Today’s idea is your safe escape from anger and from fear. Be sure you use it instantly, should you be tempted to attack a brother and perceive in him the symbol of your fear. And you will see him suddenly transformed from enemy to savior; from the devil into Christ.

Heyo! 24 year old female writer here. I’m eighteen plus so please please please ensure you are before writing to me! Now a little about me, I do work but on a part time basis, quick fire would be nice but I can’t always be here. So you may see me post more depending on what ideas I’ve got and what cravings I have. But with my time off you can guarantee I’ll be posting more! Just a heads up I’m looking for clean roleplays! I do prefer discord to conduct roleplays purely for the purpose of being able to keep things more organised!
So I’m looking for those of you who can use third person, past tense and lots of detail. I say this not to be mean but because I do consider myself to be advanced literate, I expect potential partners to be the same! I’m looking for oc (me) x male canon characters from the above movies but I will enclose further fandoms and movies with in the post! I use third and past tense and would be grateful if you do too! Please note I do have dyslexia. I’d love to get some aus going as well as some love triangles. Doubles are welcome! But please note ALL my roleplays are doubles. I will be prioritising those of you who don’t want to double and are happy to play canons. I have also just finished S4 of you so I could kill for a Joe Goldberg right now!
I’d love our roleplay to be something of comfort to us both. Something to cheer us up and keep us engaged in the story! If you’ve got any wild ideas you’ve been dying to do for the below fandoms send them my way if it’s doubles I’ll do my best to accommodate them!
Fandoms I seek include: Bridgerton and Queen Charlotte, Pitch Perfect, The Office (us), Game of thrones (tv verse), House of the Dragon (Daemon), YOU, Death in paradise, Top Gun, Riverdale, MCU, Wuthering Heights, Supernatural, Pirates of The Caribbean, Narnia, Buffy, Hunger Games, Divergent, Riverdale (early seasons), The Outsiders, Pretty in pink, Heathers and Grease. If you enjoy musicals or eighties films and are able to write as the canons from the movies please do dm me! I’d love to hear from you.

FYI, this is a story COLLECTION. Lots of standalones technically. So, you can basically start to read at any chapter, no pre-read of the other chapters needed technically (other than maybe getting better descriptions of characters than: Adam Vir=human, Krill=antlike alien, Sunny=tall alien, Conn=telepathic alien). The numbers are (mostly) only for organization of posts and continuity.
OC Written by Charlie Stastarrfallknightrise,
Typed up and then posted here by me.
Proofreading and language check for some chapters by u/Finbar9800
Future Lore and fact check done by me.
That moment you finally get to see the supersexy alien space siren everyone was talking about and you realize it is you yourself…
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Adam leaned his head against the bars.
His stomach growled horribly and his head ached. It was almost like having a really bad hangover, except without the memories of having fun or doing stupid shit the night before. Instead, he was suspended in a cage high in the air, watching as the ugly ass Prodigum galumphed around the room preparing it for his next 'guests'.
He would have used a more normal word to describe how the creature moved, except for this thing was nasty, like Jaba the Hutt level ugly. Sort of made him feel like Han Solo, though he supposed that was supposed to make Sunny princess Leia. The only problem is they didn't have a Luke Skywalker or an R2D2 to come and rescue them.
He sighed as his stomach groaned.
He glanced over at the other cages, making a face at the bleached white skeleton which hung in one, and at the two humans sitting in the other.
They looked horrific.
His stomach growled again.
"Don't worry."
His cage neighbor said,
”You get used to it after a while."
"What?”
"The hunger.”
"Do they not feed you?"
The other human shook their head,
"No, that's how it works here. They put us in these cages and then use us for entertainment while we slowly starve to death, and then, once we are dead, they feed on our decomposing corpses."
The commander made a face,
"Shit, that is really, really disgusting."
She shrugged,
"You don't seem so worried."
He held up his hands,
"I can start crying if that would make you more convinced, but otherwise I don't see much use in freaking out."
"I suppose that is a good way to do things. Who knows, the clients might actually like you, and they might bother to feed you longer."
"How do you make the clients like you?"
She waved a hand,
"Ignore what the Prodigum said, they know a good singer when they hear one."
She patted her throat,
"That's why I'm not going to last long."
"Tone def?"
"No, I'm actually a voice coach, but due to extenuating circumstances, I'm not supposed to be singing for my own health."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
He groaned and leaned back against the cage,
"I'm gone in that case."
She leaned up against the cage,
"Why, you tone def too?"
"Not hardly. I can carry a tune, but I'm not a solo act. I'm sort of just average."
"For fear of sounding too much like a voice coach. Most people are only average because they weren't trained to be good. It's all about breath control, then anyone can be pretty good."
"Well then I'll just have to-"
He was cut off in that moment as the lights over his head began to flash. He looked towards the door and watched as the doors were thrown open. The Prodigum opened his huge, ugly arms wide as his guests entered the room.
Adam stood inside his cage to get a better look, displeased when he watched more of the Prodigum, Burg and a couple of Tesraki coming in. He thought he even saw an Iotin or two somewhere in there, or was that a Gromm? They filtered into the room as the 'slaves' were dragged onto the floor.
He pressed up against the bars as he saw Sunny being dragged onto the floor.
Both sets of her hands, her feet and her neck had all been chained together. She could barely move, though she was still being forced to carry a tray of drinks.
"Welcome my friends, welcome please come in, we have something new for you today and-"
His voice was mostly drowned out by the intervening voices.
He tried leaning closer to hear, and was only able to tell what was going on when the Prodigum turned towards him and held out a hand,
"Behold, the long reaching arm of my empire."
There was a sudden muttering around the room as so many impressed clients recognized Adam.
He made a point of flipping them all the bird and spitting out the bars towards one of the Burg, who leaped away with a hiss. He laughed,
"And there's more where that came from assholes."
The Prodigum gurgled in amusement, the little breathing tubes on the side of its neck opening and closing with a wet sort of slapping noise. The commander grimaced,
"I wouldn't do that if I were you, commander.”
He motioned with one hand towards Sunny, and at that moment he watched as a group of others moved forward, grabbing her by the chains and throwing her to the floor.
She choked against the chain around her neck.
"SUNNY!"
"This really is simple, commander. Behave or she dies. These are the rules. You sing, and when we want the song changed, we will throw something at you. Don't do what we want and your friend here gets it."
He grinned, his floppy bulbous cheeks dangling down towards the ground, as the little face tentacles wriggled about in the air,
"Now, get to work."
He glanced over at Sunny, his first instinct to tell the guy to screw off, but when he looked over at Sunny, and saw her pinned against the ground. Well, he knew he couldn't do anything. He licked his dry lips and took a deep breath.
Perhaps his first song shouldn't have been an adlipped ditty that began with the line.
”Suck a dick.”
Sung with great gusto and feeling, and definitely shouldn't have been followed up with the line.
”You big ugly cock sucker.”
He was stopped a moment later when some random object was launched at his head.
He fell back against the cage, suddenly alerted by Sunny's cries of pain.
He turned over to see the Prodigum pressing his hand spike into her back.
He grimaced,
"Alright, alright! Stop, just let me think of a song ok?”
Off in the other cage, the two other humans were chuckling to themselves,
"Nice On that last line. I really enjoyed the use of vibrato, you know especially on the cocksucker part. Try to get a deeper breath next time though"
"You gonna teach me to sing before we all die?”
The crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back against the bars,
"I'm going to try and keep you alive for as long as I can. For your sake and for your friend down there. I am also hoping, that since you are the commander, you have some sort of panic transponder on you, and that helping you will help me survive long enough to get out of here."
"Fair."
"Hurry up human! I don't have all day!”
Close to panic he began to sing the only thing he could think of in the moment.
The ABC song.
Yeah, sure it wasn't one of his greatest moments, but he was under pressure.
That didn't go over so well, and he had to duck out of the way as a can came soaring up towards his head.
The party was almost in full swing now.
At a time like this, he had to go back to his roots. When he was a kid, his mother had always been a fan of music from the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He had carried her love onto his adult life, so that's all he could think of on such short notice.
He went for a little Journey to start off with though he knew he wasn't nearly good enough to do any of the songs justice.
Unfortunately he did not have a nine octave range to work with.
…
Yet?
You know how they say, don’t stop believing!
He honestly couldn't help throwing in a few songs with lines like:
“I hate everything about you”, assuming that the context would be enough that he wouldn't get something chucked at his head, but apparently he wasn't fooling anyone.
Across from him, the Vocal coach was leaning against her bars, prompting him with comments when she could be heard over the conversation from below.
Wake Me Up
Numb
Creep
Iris
It's Not My Time
"Shoulders back, try breathing from your belly and not your chest, make it deeper, open your mouth a little more. Try using an O and not an A on that line next time."
They were somewhere in between Sweet Dreams and Boulevard of Broken Dreams when his voice began to falter. The coach insisted that he needed to breathe better to last longer.
But he was so tired.
His voice was beginning to crack and he was growing light headed.
Below him on the floor he caught eyes with Sunny who was being dragged behind the Prodigum.
Unwell
You and Me
Drops of Jupiter
He was dying. Did he even remember what songs were? He was pretty sure he didn't even listen to some of these, but songs he heard when he was a kid were mostly sustaining him. Most of the songs he knew he wouldn't be able to pull off.
Kryptonite
One Last breath
My Immortal
He was ninety percent sure if any of these long dead artists could hear him singing from rock n' roll heaven whey were getting to rock and roll him straight into hell for his egregious sins.
The sound of Silence.
He broke into a coughing fit.
Something hit him through the bars and he tried to control his breathing, as he choked back into life.
What now?
Disney songs?
Um hold on? Which ones?
He was going to die here, singing Let It Go in the voice impression of a dying toad, and that would be his legacy.
Heaven or hell, whichever, it was going to be awkward.
He barely noticed when the doors were opened again and people began to trickle out. He only noticed when the vocal coach yelled his name, and he looked up from his state of misery finally allowed to break into a horrendous coughing fit.
"That was pretty good for someone who doesn't sing, but I think we can work on your breathing and your technique, otherwise you are going to destroy yourself. Plus, if you keep singing rock songs we are going to have to teach you how to use distortion properly."
He groaned, falling onto his side one hand clutched onto one of the bars as the cage gently swayed back and forth.
Beneath him, Sunny looked up with an expression of worry, though she was dragged away and out of the room before he could do or say anything.
He held his hand out, but she vanished out the door.
This was a really shit day.
Krill had been right when he had complained that the commander needed a panic button.
Honestly, he hadn't thought he would be kidnapped again, but it turns out he was pretty wrong about that.
He wondered where the rest of the crew was, and what they were thinking.
Where did they assume he and Sunny had gone.
Did they even know something was off?
He was so thirsty.
He was definitely expecting to die here.
Because he had no good plans this time.
"You know why they like humans singing so much right?"
He groggily turned his head to the side where the vocal coach was sitting, her hands clasped in her lap before her.
He shook his head.
"It can affect the emotion of the Prodigum. I know it sounds weird, but I have been watching. The better the singing is, the better it works. Happy songs make them happy, angry songs piss them off etc. etc. Even more so than humans."
"And?"
She shrugged,
"I don't know, just an interesting thought…"
He rested his head back on the cage floor.
Sure, being a siren was kind of cool, but being a siren in a cage very much was not cool.
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Thanks for reading! As you saw in the title, this is a cross posted story written by starrfallknightrise and I'll just upload some of it here for you guys, if you are interested and want to read ahead, the original story-collection can be found on tumblr or wattpad to read for free. (link above this text under "OC:..." ) It is the Empyrean Iris story collection by starfallknightrise. Also, if you want to know more about the story collection i made an intro post about it, so feel free to check that out to see what other great characters to look forward to! (Link also above this text). I have no affiliations to the author; just thought I’d share some of the great stories you might enjoy a lot!
Obviously, I have Charlie’s permission to post this and for the people already knowing the stories, or starting to read them: If you follow the link and check out the story you will see some differences. I made some small (non-artistic) changes, mainly correcting writing mistakes, pronoun correction and some small additional info here and there of things which were not thought of/forgotten or even were added/changed in later stories (like the “USS->UNSC” prefix of Stabby, Chalar=/->Sunny etc). As well as some "biggemajor" changes in descriptions and info’s for the same stringency/continuity reason. That can be explained by the story collection being, well a story collection at the start with many standalone-stories just starring the same people, but later on it gets more to a stringent storyline with backstories and throwbacks. (For example Adam Vir has some HEAVY scars over his body, following his bones, which were not really talked about up till half the collection, where it says it covers his whole body and you find out via backflash that he had them the whole time and how he got them, they just weren't mentioned before. However, I would think a doctor would at least see these scars before that, especially since he gets analyzed, treated and goes shirtless/in T-shirts in some stories). So TLDR: Writing and some descriptions are slightly changed, with full OK from the author, since he himself did not bother to correct these things before.

I've watched Rainbow Rocks twice. One in 2014 and another one in 2021. I start sharing this little fun fact because back in 2014, I had gone through several transitions. And one of them was the fact that there was a point where I didn’t like the movie at all.
Back in 2014 I had so many conflicting feelings about the direction of the show and the creative process of the franchise that I didn’t know how to handle. Part of my frustration came from the fact that this film was released just to calm down the wait for season 5. There was also the concern I had where I asked if we were gonna get a movie about ponies instead of more Equestria Girls content. It was a lot of things that, like I said, I didn’t know how to handle. I was frustrated, unnecessarily angry and I was too antagonistic to the Equestria Girls fans, and they didn’t deserve that awful treatment.
However, that was 2014. Now it’s 2023. For the G4 we got a TV show with nine seasons, four EG movies, a small TV show called Pony Life, another TV show based on EG, some shorts of that franchise, some other shorts of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and the 2017 film. We’ve got A LOT of stuff. The thought I had back in 2015 is no longer a concern, since this is already finished and I got the 2017 MLP movie, a film that I absolutely love. Because of that, I decided to rewatch Rainbow Rocks from a different angle. A different light. A different take.
The big news you’re gonna hear from me is that I don’t hate Rainbow Rocks anymore. It’s just a harmless movie. It’s still a very average film and it’s still my least favorite out of the four EG films, but I don’t have hard feelings anymore. I’ve changed over the years and I started to appreciate the Equestria Girls movies, particularly thanks to Legend of Everfree. I don’t think it’s even too late because some fans go rewatch the films overtime, in the same way I rewatch the 2017 MLP film overtime. The movie hasn’t changed, I changed. Everybody changes, after all.
Anyway, so what do I think of Rainbow Rocks now?
Over the years I started to appreciate the EG films for what they are. That doesn’t necessarily mean I like them now, it means there’s a couple of things in these four movies, mostly creative decisions, that I genuine appreciate now. The core concepts, the songs, the characters, sometimes the artstyle, etc. While the movies aren’t perfect, some of these ideas might work perfectly in My Little Pony Friendship is Magic.
I think Rainbow Rocks has lots of interesting ideas that could work after one rewrite. One of the things that make the Mane 6 so iconic is the organic flow in the character’s dynamic. In this film you kinda see a little bit of that, but I think they don’t have the most well thought out dialogue in the whole franchise. Fluttershy, Applejack and a little bit of Sunset Shimmer are ok, but I’m not sure about the rest of them. Rarity wants the rock group to be as fancy as possible, but most of her ideas slow down the pacing of the movie, and it was already too slow to me. Pinkie Pie doesn’t have the best jokes and she uses them in the worst timing possible. For example, there was a part where she uses the “drum pun” sound joke, but the reason why it doesn’t work is because there was no pun or punchline. It’s just Pinkie saying “Isn’t this supposed to be fun?” and using the drums and call it a day, nothing else. My problem with the main characters in Rainbow Rocks is that they don’t have strong features that make them interesting or strong.
Many people like the villains. The Sirens are considered some of if not THE favourite villains in the fandom. But, come to think of it, the only thing they ever did was saying this:
“You are the worst”
“No, you ARE the worst”
Do that twenty times.
Maybe it’s me, but I don’t think repeating the same dialogue over and over can make a villain interesting. If it was like Izma and Kronk from the Emperor Groove film, that might work because they have very different lines based on the relationship they have in the movie. They don’t repeat the same catchphrase over and over again. Unfortunately, Rainbow Rocks doesn’t have that. This is probably one of my problems with the movie and a lot of people will probably dismiss it, which I don’t mind. But when you hear “these are the best villains in the franchise”, you kinda expect something more than this. All I’m saying is, repeating the same line so many times is not enough.
My favourite detail in Rainbow Rocks was Sunset Shimmer receiving bad looks from other characters because of her actions in the previous film. Why? Maybe it's because what I wish it was. You have a character confronting the consequences of her previous actions. Everyone hates her. She knows she made a huge mistake. She wants to fix this problem. She wants to make friends after all the disaster she did in the first movie. It could have felt like a very relatable continuation of the 2013 film. But there's not enough development. They make the Mane 6 remembering what Sunset did in the previous film as a punchline many times until the last ten minutes, and her character arc felt forced and sudden, with no organic evolution of her or any of the Mane 6. You could have cut 90% of the film and made it into a story about Sunset Shimmer trying to get along with everybody. But instead the movie was about a music tournament. So, unless you have different music genres, it’s not interesting enough to make a movie about.
Rewatching this film and seeing Sunset Shimmer in 2021, I do wonder what would happen if everyone in Ponyville and Equestria hated Starlight because of what she did in season 5, especially when she kept doing horrible things in the last 4 seasons (*ahem* Uncommon Bond, Road to Friendship and Every little thing she does among many other Starlight episodes). I wonder why the writers didn’t do it. It’s not an impossible idea, they could have done that.
My major complain about Rainbow Rocks is Rainbow Dash, by a long shot. As someone who made amends with her friends in the first movie, she’s just too damn mean in this movie for no reason. I think she's really despicably unlikeable. The stuff she says doesn't sound like what a friend would say, specially considering what she wanted to fix in the previous film. It's not a cocky and too confident friend, it's trying as hard as possible to make this music band her band and to strongly believe in this to the point where she's too mean. I know she’s supposed to learn his lesson in the end and he obviously does, but you’re supposed to kind of want this girl to overcome her obtacles and in the end I really don’t. I thought she was horrible.
When it comes to technical details, the animation is still very stiff. Some poses can be appealing, especially in american shots (from head to waist), but other times the characters act a little bit weird. There was a part in the garage scene where Twilight ends up being alone and, instead of using one keyframe or a smooth animation to reflect concern or sadness, she changed to three keyposes with either little or weird variation. I think this type of detail works against the film. I’m not sure if there were tough deadlines back in 2014 (and even one year before the release of the film, because making an animated film is really really hard and usually the last year is for editing, post-production and marketing), but if they were more focused on doing the exact right keyframes and then animating the characters instead of doing more effective keyframes, I think it could have been better.
I think Rainbow Rocks would have become my favourite EG film if:
-The main plot was about Sunset Shimmer dealing with all the highschool hating her because of her actions. The sirens were focused on that power sign, so their presence turned the film into a band war instead of a movie about Sunset Shimmer.
-Speaking about that, the film shouldn’t have any villains.
-The soundtrack had more songs like “friendship through the ages” with some music variation instead of these pop songs.
-The soundtrack had some rock songs. After all, the film is called Rainbow ROCKS.
-The jokes were actually funny and unpredictable.
-Rainbow Dash wasn’t THAT mean and selfish.
While I don’t think Rainbow Rocks is that good, I appreciate it for a lot of things. It tried something different with Sunset Shimmer that I wish Friendship is Magic used as a blueprint back in season 6 or even season 5. I appreciate it because, if it wasn’t for that movie, we probably wouldn’t have got Legend of Everfree, a film that I really think it’s good. I appreciate it for being an alternative option for people who already loved My Little Pony and wanted more but with a different flavor, a different take, kinda like RWBY Chibi in comparison to RWBY. And I appreciate it because of how Sunset Shimmer evolved in the four films.
I’m not a fan, but I love the fact that this film has fans. And that’s the most important thing right now.

Hi everyone,
I've been wanting to build a PC for YEARS, and I finally feel it's time for that. It's going to be my first self-built PC, and I have some questions regarding my part choices.

A little background about me first:

I am not a hardcore gamer. At least I wasn't, since my laptops and desktops could barely achieve more than 25fps at lowest settings. Here is a list of games I see myself playing in the short term:

• Minecraft Java edition (hopefully with some shaders)
• Civilization VI
• Stellaris
• Skyrim with mods
• Fallout 4
• Diablo 3 and 4
• Witcher 3
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Kerbal Space Program 2

I would also like to play The Elder Scrolls 6 and GTA 6 whenever they come out.
As for the resolution - I do not currently have a 1440p monitor, but might upgrade to that in a year or two.
Additionally, I daily drive Linux, so I would like to go with AMD GPUs. But I am not against dual booting to Windows if I need to game

The PC

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 7600 3.8 GHz 6-Core Processor	€245
Motherboard	MSI PRO B650M-A WIFI Micro ATX AM5 Motherboard	€180
Memory	Kingston FURY Beast 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR5-5600 CL36 Memory	€73
Storage	Western Digital Black SN770 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive	€62
Storage	Seagate IronWolf Pro NAS 4 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive	€0 (already own)
Storage	Seagate IronWolf Pro NAS 4 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive	€0 (already own)
Video Card	MSI MECH 2X CLASSIC OC Radeon RX 7600 8 GB Video Card	€306
Case	Asus Prime AP201 MicroATX Mini Tower Case	€84
Power Supply	Cooler Master V550 SFX GOLD 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular SFX Power Supply	€84
Total	-	€~1000

The questions

1. Is 16GB RAM enough for gaming? On my laptop I have 16GB RAM and have not encountered any problems, but I do not game much.
2. What speed RAM should I get? I know that 6000MHz is what everyone recommends for high-end, but is that essential? Could I be okay with cheaper 5600MHz set?
3. Should I spend about 50€ more for an RX 6700 XT? Sure, it has 12GB VRAM, but RX 7600 is also a new-gen product and seems to be good at 1080p gaming.
4. I am planning to use the stock CPU cooler. Also I plan to get 3 more 120mm fans (the case already comes with one) and put them in this configuration - 1 fan at the bottom as intake, 1 fan at the back as intake, 2 fans at the top as exhaust. Is this a good configuration? Or should I not even bother with getting the extra fans? P.s. the whole case is meshed, and the PSU is at the front of the case

Thank you in advance.