sometimes I wonder how we all survive and then I look at my best friends and I go “oh, I survive because I don’t want to leave you yet” and it makes sense. life is so hard a lot of the time, but I want one more bowl of pasta with you.
tom nook isnt a landlord oh my god. u dont pay him rent. u pay him to build ur house. thats it. the bill is for ur house. it is not monthly. it is not rent. it is a bill for the literal construction of ur house and unlike real life theres zero interest on the loan and u never have to repay it in order to progress thru the game. simply the fact that nook builds the damn thing for u without even needing proof that u can or will pay him back is incredible. how is he the bad guy.
“yeah but i have to pay him back if i want to get a bigger house—“ Sometimes We Must Exchange Video Game Money For Video Game Goods And Services. literally wht universe is it common for games to just hand u all free shit n upgrades. it is so easy to pay nook back on day one. go catch some gd common butterflies
Unironically the Beta Trolls in Homestuck are a masterpiece of character design and writing.
12 new characters introduced fairly rapidly yet they’re all memorable, distinct, 3-dimensional (some more than others, but still) and most importantly, beloved.
Honestly an inspiration and something writers and character artists should learn from.
I really enjoy how pretty much every Homestuck character is introduced with a particular format:
[an image of character standing in their bedroom]
You are NAME. You like ACTIVITY or ITEMS. Some OTHER RELEVANT TRAITS. Some ITEMS in the bedroom get DESCRIBED.
And I think the bedroom shots do A LOT of work in characterisation - like what do these kiddos do with a space that’s wholly their own?
Like you don’t even really need the blurb, just look at these two rooms side by side and draw your own conclusions:
There are legitimately a bunch of great lessons a writer or comic creator could learn from Homestuck about how to establish a character who immediately makes a strong impression. People so often get so tied up with the memes and meta around Homestuck, they seem to forget it’s like… so well-written that millions of people will happily read conversations of these characters just talking about random bullshit like rapping or bad 90s movies and even in a format that’s *kind of hard to read*, simply because they’re just that engaging with distinct voices (even if you take typing quirks out of the equation) and great character-based humour.
The way each character makes a really strong impression in the first pesterlog they appear in, for example, or Hussie not being afraid to give good or heroic characters traits that are awkward, annoying or a bit pathetic, or just dorky interests and hobbies. HGNH I could geek out about this shit for days!
would you still love me if i was a worm? wait no sorry that’s stupid let me rephrase that would you still love me if I was of no value to you anymore? if I broke my vows by turning into someone you never agreed to be with if I suddenly couldn’t be a wife couldn’t be a mother if I couldn’t clean the house and I couldn’t put dinner on the table and couldn’t have sex would you still love me? would I even be me, to you? do you love me or the things that I do? when wives get life threatening illnesses 1 in 5 husbands leave those don’t seem like good odds so I’m just asking if I turned into a worm tomorrow and I could no longer provide you with anything at all, would the love remain? would you find a terrarium and fill it with mulch and keep me in the bedroom? would you spray me with water? would you keep me alive? would you throw me out onto the pavement? I think I would make you a house of popsicle sticks if you were a worm
I feel like in the rush of “throw out etiquette who cares what fork you use or who gets introduced first” we actually lost a lot of social scripts that the younger generations are floundering without.
A lot of tough situations where we now feel like we “don’t know what to do or say” had social scripts just a couple of generations ago and they might have been canned phrases or robotic actions but they could still be meant sincerely and unfortunately we haven’t replaced them with any more sincere or easier new script.
a lot of people are giving examples in the notes of things they just find annoying like not using headphones in public, but OP is talking about actual literal scripts of things to say in awkward situations
if you have a date or two with someone and you don’t see a relationship developing? most millennials / gen Zers just end up ghosting. but a social script that might have been taught and rehearsed in the past could be:
“I really appreciated getting dinner with you the other night and I enjoyed your company, but I’m afraid I didn’t feel a spark. I wish you the best, and hope you find that special someone!”
like it sounds kind of trite but it was at least something to say and it can still be meant with kind sincerity. it also communicates in 2 sentences that you don’t want to see them romantically again, but there aren’t any hard feelings about that. that’s it!!! that’s all it takes!!!
Another example is that at parties a lot of people talk about how awkward it is to mingle or talk to people they dont know. But at old timey parties that was traditionally the HOST’S job, and there was a specific scripted way of doing it that eased the process! The host would bring you in, introduce you and maybe even a little bit about you like what you did for a living, and then guide you to a group you could talk to. They didn’t just let you in the door and then ditch you to fend for yourself in a sea of strangers. That would be unthinkable and no one would be surprised if a get-together like that wound up being awkward.
A really good host would actually provide a topic of conversation based on things you and the person they were introducing you to had in common.
At networking events I’ve gone to, where there’s no host who knows everybody, good networkers pick up the slack. They go around the room once making just enough small talk to learn some useful info about a good portion of of the people in the room, and then circle back around and go, “Oh hey I was just talking to X over there and he’s looking for someone who does Y for his next project; you should go talk to him.” You can do something similar at parties, referring people to other people you made smalltalk with you have the same hobbies or like the same kind of movies.
So! This is a perfect case study in situations where you should be wary of misinformation.
Take a moment and ask yourself, a project like this requires a lot of time, money and dedication of resources, why would scientists dedicate that time to something that could just be done by a tree?
The answer is they wouldn’t. So that means this claim requires further investigation!
This project is called LIQUID 3, and it’s not meant for cities with wide open spaces, it’s meant for cities like Belgrade in Serbia. These cities are densely populated and heavily polluted, to the point where pollution actually chokes out current trees and makes creating green spaces difficult.
Liquid 3 was a PhD scientists answer to these problems. The microalgae tank is intended for spaces where you either:
Don’t have enough space to plant full trees, or
Don’t have enough time to plant trees and wait for them to grow up.
The tank is extremely efficient when you consider the amount of space needed compared to the amount of CO2 turned into oxygen. The tank can operate throughout the winter. And most importantly, it can be quickly set up in areas that desperately need relief from air pollution NOW not in 10 years when trees are done growing. Children currently suffocating on polluted air can’t wait for trees to grow, they need to be taken care of now, and Liquid 3 is one of the ways to take care of them. Depending on the species of microalgea used, a number have shown a pretty amazing capacity to pull heavy metals out of the air which is something trees can get choked up by.
The tanks aren’t just tanks either! Liquid 3 have solar panels placed on top, they have lighting and mobile phone charging, and they work as public benches. The designers of it want to encourage green spaces where there’s room, but where there isn’t room or time, Liquid 3 can step in. Realistically, this isn’t a replacement for trees. It’s replacing boring metal city benches with new, cooler benches that also clean the air (and have at least some heating during the winter).
Not only that, but the microalgea that grows is native to Serbia and all that microalgea has a ton of great uses! It makes for great fertilizer, compost, wastewater treatment, cleaner biofuels and even for helping create new tanks for further air purification. They only require a quick algae divide once a month, and the produced algae can be carted off to where ever it’s needed. This makes them effective solutions for areas that can’t sustain complex installations.
So yeah, there’s actually quite a lot of places that would like these. Lots of people currently breathing in terrible quality air would much rather have their boring city benches replaced with really fucking cool algae tanks that clean the air and can be used to help create + sustain future green spaces in cities. I dunno about you, but I’d take that over a dumb metal bench any day. Put these at every bus stop and I’d be delighted.
Boycott Disney. Boycott McDonald’s. Boycott Starbucks. “Oh but it won’t work, it won’t do anything” Yes it will. Boycotts have worked before and they will again. Think of the Montgomery bus boycotts. Think about American women boycotting imported British goods during the revolution.
Why do you think popular media is so quick to discount boycotts as ineffective? Could it possibly be because they work? Could it be because major corporations understand that they work and are scared? Could it be because boycotts have historically been utilized by marginalized groups to assert their views and fight for change within a conflict in which they have no power?
Do not have give in to the apathetic nihilism of “nothing I do matters, so why bother?” That is exactly what oppressors count on. Be critical of the media you consume. Ask questions. Look to history. Boycott.
