Rosehen96 - Random Things

So I’ve been thinking about rational vs. irrational character decisions.

An irrational decision is great when your story is driven by your character’s personal flaws and struggles, and for crafting situations where your audience knows that these decisions are unavoidable because they are perfectly in character. Having your characters be perfectly able to solve their problems if they weren’t, y’know, themselves, is so very hard-hitting, and can be a fantastic part of a narrative.

The downfall with irrational decisions is that it can make situations seem less dire or make your antagonists seem less dangerous. If your characters are falling over themselves and their own personal issues, then it’s hard to show how the external problems in your story pose a serious threat, because you can’t demonstrate how they’re hard to deal with if your characters aren’t making solidly competent attempts in the first place.

Rational decisions are great for stories where most of your problems are external, like your characters trying to build a spaceship or infiltrate the bad guy’s lair. It’s also key to any horror writing, where you need your characters to be competent in order for your danger to be credible; if your audience spends the entire time wondering why your protagonists aren’t doing very obvious things to solve their problems, it’ll be a lot harder to get a properly spooky atmosphere going. But if your characters are only ever making the most optimal, logical choices without ever struggling, they won’t be very compelling, so just like with irrational decision-making, there’s a time and a place for this.

Ideally, you want some combination of both rational and irrational character choices. And maybe even more importantly, whatever choice a character’s making needs to be one that makes sense for them given everything you’ve already shown in the narrative so far. If the decision feels forced or contrived, then it doesn’t matter if it’s rational or not, because it’s not a choice that fits with the rest of the story.

But, yeah, ultimately, both types of character decisions are useful tools, and it’s less about one or the other being right, and more about both of these tools being useful for different types of situations.

"No one remembered my birthday-" Well, but did YOU tell anyone it was coming up and you wanted to celebrate it with them?

"I wish someone would see through it when I tell people I'm fine-" Well, but have YOU considered not lying when people ask you how you're doing?

"I am so resentful of my friend because they keep doing this thing that really bothers me-" Well, but have YOU directly communicated that the thing is bothering you?

"I am burning out because my friend keeps expecting me to help them with serious struggles-" Well, but have YOU tried to establish the boundaries you need to feel okay?

"No one ever asks me about this thing I really care about-" Well, but have YOU brought it up yourself?

"I miss my friend but they haven't texted me-" Well, but have YOU been reaching out to them?

Sometimes people are mean, uncaring assholes, in which case you get to be mad. But sometimes you just need to communicate better. Try communication before you assume someone doesn't care!

At-will employment is inherently ableist garbage.

I've seen my partner go through 3 different jobs that all found various ways to fire them or pressure them to quit because the "accommodations" given helped nobody but the company.

When you give companies the power to terminate employment at their own discretion, they will use it at every opportunity they can, especially towards people who are deemed "difficult" (i.e., disabled).

They will always find a way around discrimination laws.

Best Megatron Optimus Dynamic?

I really love the unrequited kismesis relationships Megatron has with Optimus in the G1 cartoon.

Megatron thought of himself as Optimus’s greatest arch-foe, while Optimus Prime only thought of him as “the current Decepticon leader”.

If Megatron ever found out that Optimus didn’t care about him as a person but only as a threat and symptom of the actual problem*:the Decepticon cause, I think he’d be crushed.

Megatron:“How can this be, I betrayed you and killed your coworkers back when you were a dockworker!”

Optimus:“You’ve killed alot of people. After a while its hard to take it personally. and unlike you I go to therapy”

*remember that in the cartoon they were on the Third Great War between Autobots and Decepticons. Megatron was not their founder in the original cartoon.

Why I don’t like the first IDW Transformers

Rebooting a franchise so the good guys are former oppressors and bad guys are freedom fighters is the laziest way to try and put in grayness for the sake of grayness.

Seen it in lots of fanfics as a kid.

Just ends up with pretty much all your childhood faves unlikeable, and unfocused moderate politics of writers muddling things.

“some people don’t deserve redemption” redemption isn’t something that’s deserved, it’s something someone does. it’s making the choice to change the way you live your life, to be better, to do good things instead of bad things and try to make up for the bad things. and everyone can and should do that, at any time, no matter what they’ve done. we can’t change the past, but we can choose what kind of person to be now and in the future. we have the responsibility to do so. it is so completely not about “deserving.”

People really need to realise that “media can affect real life” doesn’t mean “this character does bad things so people will read that and start doing bad things” and actually means “ideas in fiction especially stereotypes about minority groups can affect how the reader views those groups, an authors implicit prejudices can be passed on to readers”

cruelty is so easy. youre not special for choosing it

Yesterday the 12th of May was Fibromyalgia awareness day. I'm a little late uploading it, but spreading awareness is being done nonetheless. Lots of love for my chronic pain people!! <3

I think that the worst and most dangerous misconception people have about fascism is that it's this sort of turbocharged "Beast Mode" that countries can go into to increase their production, win wars, and make the trains run on time, and that the primary objections to it centre on whether the "obvious" increase in efficiency that fascism offers is worth the loss of freedom and lives. But in reality fascist regimes like to put up a *façade* of strength and efficiency, even as they practice corruption on a scale unimaginable in democracies and even as the public interest is hollowed out by parasitical opportunists. There is no trade-off; fascism is a grift all the way down.