yes i do need this many legs

Stain on Stage

Because I loved the pose I came up with for Stain’s design update, I decided to go ahead and shade it, too! She’s probably singing “So What?” by P!nk — Winners say no to AI

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I don’t mean Australians are a “stick it to the man, fight back against those in power” kind of people – we’re generally not. And I don’t mean we have a “we’re going to do the status thing but pretend we don’t and pretend to all be equal in mixed company” thing that middle-class Americans do. I mean the status-respect system does not exist, and if you try to use it, it weirds people the fuck out at best, and insults them at worst. Treating someone most countries would say is ‘above’ you differently in Australia is basically telling that person that you hate them; it’s saying “I’m forced to interact with you due to our current circumstances but I don’t see you as a person and won’t grant you the basic respect of treating you like an equal”. (When I was in America, I was constantly suppressing the instinct that random service people were sassing me because they overuse honourifics and were so keen to help me.)

This makes interacting with foreigners really baffling in a lot of circumstances. In university, my international friends would often describe Australians as “friendly, but very rude”. They thought we were all arseholes because of the way we spoke to our PhD supervisors and soforth, and wouldn’t believe us when we explained that our behaviour was respectful and that being deferential would be weird and awkward and insulting to them. Learning Japanese had a similar problem; everyone in the class could get the concept of different levels of formality and deference in language, ans was happy to memorise the usage of various words for Japanese people, but using them on each other was super weird, and we’d only ever use the most casual form of anything unless specifically instructed otherwise by the teacher.

The reason I’ve been thinking of this lately is because I’ve recently become aware that a lot of countries have like… a special respect for their country’s leaders? I don’t just mean “yeah, that guy makes the rules”, but that having that office makes them better than everyone else, somehow. Which I expect from countries with royal families, because Tradition, but I’ve recently found that Americans feel this way about their President, too. (Except the current one, who seems to be enough of a dick to break the system.) Like, if six Americans were in an aeroplane that was going down and there was only one parachute and one of the Americans was A Generic Non-Trump President, it’s just assumed that that guy gets the parachute? Like he’s automatically the life worth saving over the others, and they’d just give up their chance in favour of him? And that’s so weird to me. An Australian prime minister would have a 1 in 6 chance at the parachute; however the people decided, “this guy happens to be the leader of the country” wouldn’t be a factor. 

When Americans don’t like a President, they usually feel the need to work in how he’s “not my president”, either through sheer denial, or by finding some way he’s theoretically illegitimate (different ways votes are counted, wild conspiracy theories about birth country, etc.), and while making sure those rules are obeyed IS extremely important, I’ve recently noticed that part of the motivation seems to be that they’re invested in whether he’s Really The President because being the President somehow makes someone Special rather than just a normal dick who’s been put in charge of the group project. (You see the same thing in “THIS IS TRUMP’S AMERICA!”, like him becoming President gives him superpowers or something).

I remember in school we were always taught to treat others how you wanted to be treated. You were no better or worse than anyone else. You want to be treated equal to everyone else and that meant being polite and showing decency and helping each other out. It’s true we only use titles for teachers or elders (indigenous Australians use “Aunty” and “Uncle” as a show of respect to their elders) but outside of that if someone calls you Miss y/n or sir or whatever it’s just uncomfortable. In hospitality and retail some of us will still use sir/ma'am mainly because we don’t know customers names but even then that’s rare and usually applied only to elderly. We personally don’t want to be addressed by titles or even surnames (unless it’s a nickname which I’ll get to) so we don’t use the titles or surnames for other people. With surnames often we use them as a nickname if we dont/can’t shorten their names. Getting a nickname (a good one, not one that is intentionally meant to bully you ofc. E.g. ScoMo is the nickname for our PM but he’s a piece of shit and ScoMo sounds a lot like Scum-mo) is the biggest show of respect in Australia. Usually it’s simply just adding a vowel or changing it up a little. I.e. John = johnno, Darren = Dazza, etc. If we can’t do it to your first name we do it to your last name. If we can’t do it to your last name it’s either a feature or behaviour and we put it in a good light. You ever notice that Australians like to make fun of each other and “insult” each other? There’s a very subtle difference when it’s truly meant to be insulting but that’s our way of being affectionate for each other. We will point out your flaws and make fun of you (and stop if you say no) and we will give you a nickname and it’s all in good humour. It’s one of the things I find foreigners get really upset about because they dont understand why we are so rude to each other. You build up a hard skin in this country and forget hat sometimes that stuff IS a bit insulting.

It’s worth pointing out that I’m speaking in generalisations here; Australia, like many modern colonialised nations, is an immigrant “melting pot” culture. Our indigenous population is not very large, partly because their population density wasn’t high (compared to the country’s current density) before England started dumping people here but much more because of, well, all of the genocide. There was quite a lot of genocide. There still is, to be honest. And while the first wave of colonial settlers were mostly English, that very very quickly stopped being the case due to multiple subsequent immigration rushes that I won’t go into here, and despite what the One Nation racists will tell you, constant immigration is still a cornerstone of our culture and our economy, as is foreign students coming here to go to our universities and go home when they have their degrees (which keeps our tertiary education system afloat).

Poketaur OC: Diva the Alolan Vulpix (by Katandstar154)

This was something I got from katandstar154.bsky.social as part of a design trade! (Here’s my part in case you were curious) I had them design a Alolan Vulpix taur based on a shiny one I caught! Name: Diva (both) Age: 23 Species: Alolan Vulpix Pronouns: She/They Sexuality: Lesbian Bio: A Pair of Vulpix with an affinity for cute things and talking among themselves for hours Theme: Ulterior Motives - Who’s Who? — Winners say no to AI

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My favorite old men! Dutch giving Roman a good luck kiss before a Draft pulling competition. 🥰

So, we're gonna start with the first obvious question:

What is a circadian rhythm?

A circadian rhythm is the thing that keeps your body on a schedule. It's why people tend to go to sleep and wake up at around the same times every day. It's supposed to be roughly 24 hours long and in theory, it takes cues from light. That's why you've likely been told to put away all electronics some time before you go to bed.

But like anything to do with the human body, sometimes it doesn't function quite normally.

Sometimes that's a temporary thing, like if a person affected by caffeine drinks coffee too late in the day, or if you take a flight to somewhere several time zones over. When you're sick, you might sleep more than normal because rest is important for fighting off illnesses. That's normal, and you should get back to normal fairly soon.

Sometimes you have a circadian rhythm sleep disorder. That's more of a problem.

Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder

This one's kind of what it says on the tin. If we say the average bed time for a human adult is 9:30 pm and the average wake time is 5:30 am, then someone with Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder might function best if they fall asleep at something like 3:00 am and wake up at 11:00 pm.

This is not them being lazy or anything, this is just how their body works, and you can probably see how it can make existing in society a bit difficult. This might also be difficult to get diagnosed with before adulthood, because with children and teenagers it gets written off as perfectly normal behaviour. (A number of schools should probably be starting later in the day than they are.)

Advanced Sleep Phase Disorder

This one's kind of the opposite of Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder. If we keep the same hypothetical average bedtime of 9:30 pm, then someone with Advanced Sleep Phase Disorder might be ready to pass out at 4:00 pm and wake up at midnight. You might be able to see how that can also make existing in society a bit difficult.

Non-24-Hour Sleep-Wake Disorder

It's called Non-24 for a reason. Someone with this has a circadian rhythm that doesn't stick to 24 hours. Trying to stick to a 24-hour day can result in many problems, like symptoms of sleep deprivation. That's extremely unhealthy. Sometimes, though, someone with Non-24 does manage to stick to something resembling a 'normal' rhythm for short periods of time.

Non-24 is most common in people who are completely blind, as they're not necessarily getting the light cues from sunrise and sunset that people with sight are supposed to get. However, Non-24 can occur in sighted people, it's just much rarer. That's why, near the start of this post, I said the circadian rhythm in theory gets cues from light.

Non-24 can hit you at any age, including childhood, and you really ought to be able to figure out why this disorder can make living 'normally' difficult. Hard to keep a regular job when your body thinks you should be sleeping during your shift half the time. Hard to do well in school when your body won't keep to a 'normal' schedule and you're ready to pass out in 3rd period. Hard to keep up with friends in your area when half the time, you're asleep when they're available to hang out.

Can you fix them?

There are things someone with these disorders can try to help them keep to a 'normal' schedule, like light therapy and melatonin, but there is no guarantee that they'll work. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you just can't 'fix' a circadian rhythm. Making yourself wake up at the same time every day might just result in you being constantly sleep deprived. Sorry. It's not fun.

Conclusion

Look, sometimes your sleep's just fucked. If you've been trying all the things you get told to try in order to fall asleep at the 'appropriate' time of night and you still can't, you might want to talk with your GP about finding a specialist.

Also, it turns out that if you've been lying in bed for over an hour trying to fall asleep, you're supposed to just get up and do something for a while, not just keep lying there. Pretty sure lots of us would've liked it if our parents knew this when we were kids.

Rough concept for a spider protogen:] Update: I finished the spider!