Older Version Of Renga Is So In Loveee 🤧

A popular idea in Harry Potter fanfiction is for light and dark magic to be different magical attributes/political factions and for purebloods vs muggleborns to be a culture clash that can fixed with education (or in some stories, assimilation).

In canon, dark magic is basically any particularly malicious spells and PB vs MB is undoubtedly racism. Magical KKK or Nazis if you will.

Most fanfics make light vs dark/PB vs MB into great alternative stories but occasionally I find ones that make me wonder if the writers remember what canon was about. Like, they’ll describe a character or family being neutral in the war, but if the war is about discrimination and not simply attributes or politics, if it’s a fight for people to have equal rights regardless of their blood status or species, how can there be a neutral side? Saying you don’t care which “side” wins in this context is like saying you don’t care whether muggleborns are second class or equal. Evil and injustice grow stronger when normal, good people pretend that someone else’s discrimination has nothing to do them. And when evil finally has an excuse to target you, there will be no one left to help you.

Anyway, I’m sure most fanfic authors know very well how wrong discrimination is and are just enjoying writing about magical world politics and drama, I just wish some of them were clearer about it! This post got a bit longer and heavier than I expected 🤔🙄😅

Trigun: Stampede, Wolfwood, and Food

So, I think a major part of any worldbuilding should always involve food, and where it comes from. The worldbuilding around No Man's Land in Trigun: Stampede is a little tricky in this regard, since there's shown to be no real agriculture or plant life (Meryl's utter shock at the "flora" on Ship Three as a total foreign phenomenon suggests it's more rare than in the manga) so sustainable human-friendly food sources are rare and not really addressed. We see characters eating worms, and presumably there's whatever it is worms eat, and beyond that, it's suggested that pretty much all of humankind's nutrition comes from plants.

The desert dudes living off worm meat refer to "plant-based food" as an "extravagance" in the opening scene of episode 4 (aptly named "Hungry"). Meryl, by contrast, is grossed out by the idea of eating worm meat -- I think we can infer then, that Meryl, being a college-educated city girl, probably had regular access to Plant-generated food, while Outlanders are more dependent on alternative sources of nutrition.

Wolfwood, I think, falls closer to the latter category -- He's very used to eating worms, as we see in this episode, not even flinching at grabbing and devouring a whole worm, and even smoked dried worm legs as a kid in a later flashback, so supplementing his diet and other aspects of his life with worms is probably something he's used to doing for survival:

And I gotta say, the way Wolfwood antagonizes the others about eating worm-based food?

Yeah, it's a power play in some respects -- he's making a point to Vash about 'kill or be killed' to survive when he catches and throws a worm at him, and he's taunting Meryl to get a rise out of her with the roasted worm meat at the end of the episode.

But there's something very "Gross Big Brother" about it -- he's antagonizing them, but there's also some underlying level of care in it. He is showing Vash how Wolfwood thinks it's necessary to survive; he's bullying Meryl into eating the food that's available, because Wolfwood probably grew up with the understanding that you couldn't afford to turn your nose up at whatever food you got.

It's food, it's there, it's a valuable and scarce resource, and as much of an asshole as Stampede!Wolfwood is, he has those ingrained big brother instincts to look out for those around him. And food is an important part of that, because when you live with scarcity, food is life.

The whole bit with Zazie in disguise might be a charade (assuming Wolfwood already clocked Zazie from the get-go and it didn't take the worm devouring them for that card to be revealed) but it still pulls from Wolfwood's characterization in the '98 anime where he gives two of his last pieces of food to a couple of hungry-looking kids:

And the sentiment of "you still deserve to eat" as an expression of care is still real for him, especially given his smile when Vash repeats his words, finally eating some of the worm meat at the end of episode four:

Our worldbuilding implication is that food is scarce and rare in the Outlands, and Wolfwood is someone who knows how to survive by any means possible -- including eating whatever is available -- which is something he's nonetheless willing to share with others, because at his core he's a decent person who isn't as selfish as he may pretend to be.

And food is one hell of a love language.

What if the wizarding world used a ranking system like in Welcome to Demon School Iruma-Kun?

The initial ranking could be either during the Sorting Ceremony or at the end of first year after you’ve actually done some stuff.

You can rank up by academic achievement, doing really well at sports (mainly Quidditch), special services to the school, becoming an animagus, accomplishments outside school... But maybe rank ups have to be justified with  evidence/witness, so stuff like saving the Philospher’s Stone may or may not qualify.

There’s probably a slowly-changing tendency for blood status and other prejudices to influence rank, and you can bet that Umbridge would’ve demoted Harry and his allies as much as possible while she taught.

I can see Neville starting right at the bottom and steadily rising up like Iruma does.

Every single time I see a take that amounts to "if you write about X happening, or like fiction where X happens, you like X" I'm reminded of this one time I was at a casual friends house as a young kid. We were in her room, pretending to "be orphans" escaping from an evil orphanage and having to take care of each other and fend for ourselves. It was all very Little Orphan Annie/All Dogs Go to Heaven and based on the 80s pop media.

And this girl's mom comes in, hears what we're playing and gets all MAD and UPSET. She says that if we play act something, it's because we want it to happen. So her daughter must WANT HER TO DIE.

First off lady, we were 6 year year olds, so take it down several notches. We barely had a concept of mortality for fucks sake. She made us feel so guilty and ashamed, because she was taking our game personally.

Now I have a 5 year old. And sometimes she looks at me and says "pretend you're dead, and I have to -" Whatever it is. Some adult task she's assigned herself.

And it's just so transparently obvious that she's practicing the idea of having to do things on her own. Which is exactly what 5 year olds are supposed to do. I actually find it very flattering that the only way she can envision me not being available to help her is to be literally deceased. Otherwise, obviously, she wouldn't have to do scary hard things alone.

It's a natural coping mechanism. She's self-soothing about what would happen if I wasn't there by play-acting independence in a perfectly safe environment. She's also practicing skills she needs, and making up excuses for practicing them on her own, without taking on the responsibility of being able to do them by herself all the time yet.

Humans mentally rehearse bad this in their brains all the time. We can do that by ruminating- going over worries over and over again, which tends to lead to anxiety and helplessness and depression. Or we can do it with a sense of play- by recognizing that the fiction is fiction and we can dip our toe into these experiences and expose ourselves to bad things without actually being injured.

My daughter does not want me dead. And I don't want bad things to happen in real life. But fiction and pretend help me face the horrors of the world and think about them without collapsing or messing myself up mentally.

Work hacks for massage therapists part 2 (joke)

So you've got gas during the session. Blame it on the clinic's therapy animal. You can make one up if necessary. Oh dear, Fluffy's popped off again. Fluffy can even be another client's service animal in the other room, a neighbour's pet come to visit.

Rereading the Lord of the Rings series recently, and it's so fascinating to me how much the series is a denial of the typical juvenile power-fantasy that is associated with the fantasy genre.

Like, the power-fantasy is the temptation the Ring uses against people It tempts Boromir with becoming the "one true king" that could save his people with fantastic power. It tempts Sam with being the savior of Middle Earth and turning the ruin that is Mordor into a great garden. It tempts Gandalf and Galadriel with being the messianic figure of legend who brings salvation to Middle Earth and great glory to herself.

The things the Ring tempts people with are becoming the typical protagonists of fantasy stories that we expect to see. and over and over we see that accepting that role, that fantasy of being the benevolent all-powerful hero, is a bad thing. LotR is about how power, even power wielded with benevolent intent, is corrupting.

And its so fascinating how so much of modern fantasy buys into the very fantasy LotR denies. Most modern fantasy is about being that Heroic power-fantasy. About good amassing power to rival evil. But LotR dares not to. It dares to be honest that there is no world where anyone amasses that power and remains good.

I guess that's one of the reasons its so compelling.

Yikes, hadn't thought about this. We just got a new eftpos machine at work, what if we get a blind client one day?

Replacing physical buttons and controls with touchscreens also means removing accessibility features. Physical buttons can be textured or have Braille and can be located by touch and don't need to be pressed with a bare finger. Touchscreens usually require precise taps and hand-eye coordination for the same task.

Many point-of-sale machines now are essentially just a smartphone with a card reader attached and the interface. The control layout can change at a moment's notice and there are no physical boundaries between buttons. With a keypad-style machine, the buttons are always in the same place and can be located by touch, especially since the middle button has a raised ridge on it.

Buttons can also be located by touch without activating them, which enables a "locate then press" style of interaction which is not possible on touchscreens, where even light touches will register as presses and the buttons must be located visually rather than by touch.

When elevator or door controls are replaced by touch screens, will existing accessibility features be preserved, or will some people no longer be able to use those controls?

Who is allowed to control the physical world, and who is making that decision?

work hacks for massage therapists part 1 (joke)

It's a stinking hot summer afternoon and the client doesn't want the fan on, or perhaps a frosty winter morning with the heaters on full blast. It's time to get creative: your sweat dripping onto the client's back isn't sweat, it's essential oil. Sea salt and musk. Why yes, of course it's supposed to be this pungent, it's for clearing the sinuses. You're welcome.

Aw, all their symbols are there.

GOD THEY’RE SO GAY I—