I Would Put Gahlok Instead But I Don't Have The Canister Handy

new piranesi is top tier relaxation material. dissolving chunks of static demand sinking into the sound.

are there any ride or die new piranesi fans in existence? im thinking of making more stuff like this

Had an awful day today, but here have a slightly updated Hahli for her MNOGII look~

I'm going to go pass out now

I hate how everything's called devices and apps now. Those are frail words with no weight and show no respect like machine and program do.

The BIONICLE world has a canonical...hell?

Oh yeah, that's A Thing. I had been toying with that as a Fun Fact, but I kind of assumed we were all like

But I'm happy to hear I can put this back on the slate! So! Today You Learned about Karzanhi!

In BIONICLE, the main inhabitants of the world are these worker fellows called the Matoran, (the people the Toa protect) and they need to keep working for their world to keep functioning (this seems dystopian to me, but the story kind of glosses over that).

The Matoran have this legend that if you're a very good little worker you're sent to Artakha, a divine workshop island kingdom ruled by an entity also known as Artakha. They would work in this ultimate workshop with Artakha to create cooler gadgets and buildings than anywhere else in the world.

But if you're a bad little worker, you're sent to Artakha's brother, Karzanhi. There bad little workers go to his dark kingdom, and are never seen again...

Obviously we have Heaven and Hell parallels here. In the actual story, most of the characters don't believe this is real. In one book, the heroes come across an evil vine creature that's named Karzanhi after the legend.

But then a bit later we find out that Karzanhi is totally real...

Except... he's kind of a doof. See, bad workers weren't sent to his kingdom as punishment, they were sent because Karzanhi's job is to fix them (these are bionic beings, remember?). The idea was Matoran who were bad workers because they needed some kind of repairs were sent to his kingdom for him to repair and send back. But Karzanhi was garbage at his job, so instead of sending them back after "repairing" them, he just sent them away, or kept them in his own kingdom. The reason Matoran never came back was because he was hiding his own shoddy work.

In fact, he also doesn't realize anything exists outside of his own work. When the heroes pass through his kingdom trying to get to the Plot, he doesn't believe that they're saving the world because as far as he knows, the world is just peachy! When he finds out from them how bad things are, he decides to take a hand in world events himself. And predictably, screws things up even worse.

[He also eventually gets a set that looks nothing like his illustration, because mutation shenanigans, but whatever.]

So yeah! BIONICLE Hell! If you ever see me use 'WTK' that stands for "What the Karzanhi?" We in the BIONICLE fandom used it back on BZPower.

POV: mister Devon Price, PhD, telling me that I am right about everything

Source: Unmasking Autism, discovering the new faces of neurodiversity

Having icons on the dashboard increases community. I don't take the time to read every username, but with a quick glance, I know who posted something. It means I can associate what they posted with them. Otherwise it's just Stuff. (It's also fun to see the icons. It's a unique personalization that makes people happy, and their prominence makes tumblr unique.) It doesn't take up space. Why take that away?

it's honestly alarming that they're making this shift to depersonalize and disintegrate community.

part of me feels like this is the progression they want:

can't tell who posts -> don't care who posts -> no connection to who is on your dash -> FYP/algorithm

and it's horrible that they seem to be taking such a beloved website and sending it in these directions. probably overreacting but it's sad and frustrating to watch it go

anyway. it's a good reminder to reblog the posts you love, because that's how the website can keep functioning like it does

The way I see it, there are two kinds of shame:

Shame for doing something actually bad

Shame for doing something others/society has told you is bad

The first includes things that actually cause harm to someone, like a thoughtless comment or stepping on your dog's paw, etc. These are actions which require acknowledgement and amends.

The second is much broader, and includes everything from liking bad movies to being queer. These are things that may be unusual but are ultimately harmless. Someone or something in your life has just treated that oddity as a transgression, and one way or another you've internalized that perspective.

In my opinion it is crucially important for your well-being to be able to separate the two. If you don't, and you're treating the shame of having punched someone identically to liking a critically-panned movie, you're going to be a anxious wreck. You'll be constantly over-analyzing and policing yourself, feeling like a bad person who's just been really good at hiding it so far.

In the worst cases you might lash out at other people enjoying harmless things, redirecting your shame outward and becoming unable to distinguish truly harmful actions from those you’ve just been taught are bad.

Shame is a feeling that can really eat away at you if you let it. It's best to know when it's appropriate. If it is, you can act on it to resolve what's happened. If it's not, you can let that feeling go so it doesn't take any more from you.

Every time you mention bionicle I get flashbacks to the 2006 music video commercial that used that all American rejects song, in a good way

and even when your hope is gone

There's this idea, fairly common in society, that mental illness is for teens and up. Children are happy little creatures, generally, right? Sometimes they're abused and the trauma can make them mentally ill, but that's not common.

There are two fundamental problems with this attitude. One, it's incorrect to assume that trauma is the only reason a young kid can be mentally ill. Two, trauma is more common than people think. I'll be covering the first problem in this post through the lens of my particular experience.

Where I live, you can be diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 18 years old. You cannot be diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a minor. This poses a problem because my age of onset was in first grade, roughly six years old. Because of the fact that I was very young and new to the world, this was also the age of my first suicide attempt. Thinking I wouldn't be able to pass a spelling test genuinely felt like something worth trying to die over. So, I ate some hemlock, since I'd read about Socrates being killed with it. Luckily, I ate western hemlock, an unrelated species, and just felt kind of sick.

I'm not recounting that for fun or pity. I'm recounting it because children with mental illness are in genuine danger because they have little to no experience with managing their emotions, have little to no concept of the idea that their life can change and improve, and are dismissed by adults. I told a teacher that the test made me want to die, though not that I'd attempted to, and it was brushed off as little kid hyperbole. If I had used a method that was effective rather than one I thought would be, I would have been dead at six years old.

I would not receive medication that worked even a bit for another two years. I would not receive treatment for bipolar disorder specifically for ten years, and that required my PCP fudging the reason for the medication because she was afraid I would die if she didn't, and diagnosis was still two years off at minimum. I received a formal diagnosis at age 19, thirteen years after onset.

But surely that's uncommon, right? This story is a huge edge case, right? I actually have no idea, because age of onset and age of diagnosis are massively conflated for most disabilities. Policies like the one in my area that restricted bipolar diagnoses by age can artificially raise the age of "onset", in my case by thirteen years. The general idea that children are somehow immune to mental illness can also delay diagnosis by several years, perpetuating the idea that young children can't be mentally ill. The data on when people start experiencing mental illness is inherently skewed upwards, and I frankly don't have a good estimate on how bad that skew is. If anyone does have that data, please chime in.

Listen to children. If they're saying they're sad all the time, that they don't care about anything, that they don't see a future for themselves, those are signs of depressive symptoms. If they say that tests make them feel sick, that they can't do anything because they're scared, that they can't breathe and freeze up, those are signs of anxious symptoms. Many children talk about imaginary things, and that's just fine, but slip in a question or two about them to make sure that the kid is just playing, and not experiencing psychosis.

Children are new to the world and vulnerable, and they don't know what's normal and what isn't. They need people who are more experienced watching out for problems they might be having, and listening when they talk about having problems. If you can, try to be the person who perceives them, and tells them that things can be better.