#>> itself in situations just by existing

[slimyenemy]

if you want to talk to me online in this context you're not allowed to cheat on me that's my boundary

[wackywatchdotcom]

imo jax has no clue that hes miserable. like hes putting on a face for sure but i dont think he actually has the emotional awareness to know WHY hes doing that. he just wants to look cool and masculine and thats as far as he thinks on it. theres more to it but he doesnt know that. being sad isnt cool so he wouldnt even entertain the idea that hes secretly sad

[hibernating-stag]

It's definitely more building on the events of my fic than anything that implied in canon, but I still really like the idea that Robo-Ky and Venom were living in a skeleton of an apartment while the bakery was taking off and it slowly gets filled with more furniture and personal effects as time goes on.

I think it might take a bit for it to properly sink in that the bakery someone else's home that they happen to live in. It's theirs and theirs to do what they want with it and that gets reflected in how it looks, yk (๑ᵔ⤙ᵔ๑) ?

[spocks-kaathyra]

Cardassian conlang (part 1?)

Finally started making my Cardassian conlang and I'm having so much fun already. Get this:

There's a distinction between alienable and inalienable possession, something that occurs in many natural languages. An example is, like, "my nose" vs "my hat". My nose is inalienable because it will always be mine, while my hat is alienable because it can stop being mine. So in languages with this distinction, you'd use different words for "my" in those two situations.

In my Cardassian language, possession is indicated with suffixes attached to nouns and people's names. People are "possessed" in the sense that, y'know, they're your mom or your friend or your orthodontist or whatever. Generally, you'd use the alienable form for people. Your orthodontist might not always be your orthodontist, your friend might not always be your friend. The exception is that you always use the inalienable form(s) for family. Your mom will always be your mom.

So, to use the inalienable possessive for a friend would be to say that they are as close to you as family, that you trust that they will always be your friend. This is often, like, a milestone in dating. To start saying "my girlfriend (inalienable)" marks that your relationship is serious. (Traditionalists will say that you shouldn't use the inalienable form until you're properly betrothed, but kids these days have their own ideas.) In this way, it becomes a pretty straightforward term of endearment (or, rather, grammatical particle of endearment).

Since there's no equivalent in Federation Standard, the translator often renders it as "my dear."

Here's a table of the 10 different words for "my"

So, presuming that the speaker is a man, and the person they're referring to is also a man who they don't have to use the honorific form with...

/alʊk/ - "friend"

/alʊkɬei/ - "my friend"

/alʊkxa/ - "my dear friend"

/ilɨm̥xa/ - "my dear Elim"

[ozsvessalius]

on the last episode of maid after watching all day & as a person currently living w my abusers who are in denial abt abusing me & justifying their satan spawn's abuse towards me... GOD, this show is too real at portraying that specific dynamic. i feel so seen it's making me sick

[pantestudines]

No one should care but ive been thinking about it and my take is that the root of the walrus/fairy question is one specific word used by the original poll: "surprised". The question is not which would change your worldview or which is more/less possible to really happen. The question is which *surprises* you more. To me, this means which causes a stronger immediate surprise reaction in you upon opening that door. In essence, how bad do you flinch?

This, to me, is why so many people (including myself!) choose Walrus. A walrus is an immediate situation! That's an animal larger and stronger than you are, one that I would say is potentially very dangerous, that many people have never seen in real life. And now it's your responsibility and on your doorstep! A walrus on a doorstep is a novel idea, at least to me. I don't think I've ever had an animal just appear at my door, and certainly never knock. Sure, after the gut reaction dies down, the mundanity of the situation is certain; a walrus is a real animal and the perpetrator is likely nearby, laughing at the world's weirdest ding-dong ditch prank. But for a few seconds, it's just you, your expectations upon opening a door, and a pinniped of unusual size.

Now let's examine the fairy; The term can be vague, but I think most people imagine a generally humanoid but very small creature with insect wings. First off, by being small, the fairy will likely not trigger a defensive response, unlike the walrus. This thing is not an immediate threat, at least to your subconcious. Also, by being humanoid, usually with a very human face and features, this changes the situation from "strange beast on my doorstep" to "strange person on my doorstep". Obviously this may be different from person to person, but I think "strange small person on my doorstep" would illicite much weaker response from my flight or fight reflex than a large, strange animal. This is nothing to say about the familiarity most people have with fantasy and fantasy ideas, and the lack of familiarity most people have with walrus' in general, but I think those are also factors.

[fragmentedblade]

I think I've become an official HI3 player. I check the HSR leaks hoping for iterations of HI3 characters now

[rustyrailways]

Everyday I wish they explored the class/house system in Piltover further so we could see just how vast the differences in economic status and quality of life exists in the city. We know there is a house system at the very least, but to what extent does it effect things?

[ludcake]

Few things loom over A Song of Ice and Fire quite like the Others - the pale, cold gods beyond the Wall, which first introduce us to the magic of Martin's world. Better theorycrafters (and writers) than me have gone at length about the thematic strengths of the Others, and how they contrast the coming struggle against the winter foretold by the Starks since Book 1 with the petty politics, intrigue and bitterness of the Southron courts, which see it better fit to war against each other than unite against the looming threat to, as they "hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every creature with hot blood in its veins", as said by Old Nan in AGOT Bran IV.

When we first meet the Others, in the very first chapter of the entire series, the very first thing we are told of is the cold and the dark - and, of course, the dead. Waymar, Gared and Will are already put to discomfort before the Others are even hinted at, though it is clear that the three rangers know of the tales of White Walkers. Gared and Will are veterans of the Night's Watch, but as soon as there are hints of the darkness and the cold, Will seems to judge Gared ready to kill Ser Waymar for denying them a fire - and while it is true that Gared had already lost both ears and a finger to frostbite, we are also told that it is warmer than usual in the Wall, enough that it is weeping, or melting.

Of course, as we all know, the wildlings the trio was sent to track have disappeared, seemingly turned to wights - and it is here that we first meet the Others, and find one of their rare and few descriptions, at a moment where they seem all too human, perhaps more than anywhere else in the series. The Others are often framed as, well, Other - we see little of them but as distant shadows, the cold gods spoken of by Craster, and Old Nan's tales (more on that later).

Afterwards, of course, Ser Waymar and the Other engage in a duel, and notably, its companions do not engage; instead, they watch the fight, and approach only to deliver a coup de grace - and in what I believe to be one of the most interesting moments of the prologue, they speak, and seem to mock Ser Waymar.

To me, this already provides a stark contrast to how the White Walkers were depicted in the show, which hints at an origin of them as men turned by the Children of the Forest as a weapon; though these warriors of frost seem cruel and dissimulated, they have a tongue, and communicate with each other, with distinct voices and both flair and personality. Interestingly enough, perhaps, the same conlanger who developed the Dothraki and High Valyrian tongues for the TV show supposedly began developing a tongue for the Others during the production of the show's pilot - though that idea was (unfortunately) dropped. The Others are a people, creatures of ice just as dragons are of fire, dwelling beyond where it is always winter - and they bear armor and swords of frost, speak a language of harsh ice and bring forward the cold wherever they come. Let us take a look at their other prominent appearance, in Sam the Slayer's great bout against the white shadow.

These are the two times we face the Others directly - and they are both heralded by the looming cold, the rustling of the trees, the darkness and despair filling the men who see them; they bear pale crystal swords, seem to melt at contact with obsidian, are able fighters, fast and elegant, and glow and shimmer in the reflective ice of their armor, turning the color of their surroundings as it reflects upon them - and interestingly enough, both appearances are near sentinel trees, though they are common enough in the North for it not be particularly aberrant.

Every single other thing we know of the Others, however, comes from other sources; some more reliable, such as Mance Rayder and Tormund Giantsbane, who have personal experience with them, while others come from distant reports, passed down in the library at Castle Black or by Old Nan's tales. We are told of the Long Night and myths of the North by Maester Yandel, and Craster speaks of his cold gods sparsely, but if anyone, he's the one who'd know them best; and Melisandre, the Red Witch that follows King Stannis, speaks of them as shadows, servants of the Great Other - a god whose name must not be spoken.

What is interesting, then, is what is not shown in both these encounters; we see no great ice spiders, no weaving of spellcraft, no eternal hatred for all that lives. They commit no particularly great atrocity for evil's own sake - they create their army of the dead through the wights, but it may well be motivated by the pragmatism of an unending army, rather than an ultimate desire or appreciation for undeath over life, as they show little appreciation or care for the walking dead but as tools of warfare - and the Others don't feed their servants the flesh of human children, nor do they deal with the Children of the Forest. Much of what we are told of the Others, and who they are, comes from secondary information, legends passed down generation after generation by wet nurses and servants to babes low and highborn alike.

I must take a moment here to emphasize that I don't believe that this disproves what we are told of the Others; while indeed the information that is shown to us is sparse, a lot of what is told is not a stretch at all, and it'd be unlikely for it to be entirely disproved - all the more when the source of information are Wildlings such as Mance, Tormund or Ygritte, who have been dealing with the encroaching advance of the Others for years now and lived with that threat more than any Southron Maester. However, I do think that there is more to the Others than an omnicidal horde of ice demons - fitting though the idea of a climate change allegory may be, I am skeptical that the ultimate conclusion to A Song of Ice and Fire lies in a reenactment of the Battle of the Black Gate. As Martin famously said to Rolling Stone,

Of course, this line has been endlessly repeated, parodied and quibbled over, but I do think it's a recurring theme throughout the series - the full interview goes at length on a lot of fascinating points that I believe shed a very bright light on a lot of what Martin believes and how he writes, and you can find it here. Even the matter of the "little baby orcs" is brought up in the idea of the righteousness of Joffrey's assassination, and I definitely think it's a motif that bears keeping in mind; the innocence of children, and the conflict between their significance as the continuation of a line and the innocence they represent, is something that's touched on with the Lannisters, the conflict at Castle Black regarding baby Aemon Steelsong, and it is something that I believe will be reflected down the line whenever Craster's sons reappear.

The orcs in Lord of the Rings function, in many ways, a not dissimilar purpose to what the Others and their wights are; a looming threat casting a long shadow over the realms of men, over which the petty disputes of politics and family are secondary to what may yet be the end of life as we know it. An army so incredible and mighty that it seems hopeless for the sentinels of civilization to defeat, which will require that humanity either "face them and fight them or defeat them, or work with them, but […] do so as earthmen", to quote the fat man himself from that same interview. From the same interview, he comments this regarding the Wall and the Night's Watch:

This is, of course, a personal piece of meta, reflecting on my own approach to the themes; but to me, one of the most consistent pieces of relevance in George R R Martin's writing is his capacity for humanity, and to empathize and humanize people and characters which would not, in the traditional fantasy genre with which he plays, be humanized at all - that's at the crux of PoVs like Jaime or Cersei, or Jon's journey with the Wildlings, or even a character like Sansa. The human heart in conflict with itself is the fundamental reason to write, to tell a story - and if there is no conflict with itself, if there is no humanity to be had, there is no story, or character.

Of course, there are missteps in the process; his heavily misogynistic treatment of characters such as the Dead Ladies Club, or the orientalist nature of the characterization of Dorne and Essos are some of the most litigious pieces of his writing in terms of abstracting humanity away from parts of the setting. But ultimately, when we do explore these areas and these characters, we meet people like Arianne, and we're made to care for even the commonfolk of Essos moreso than the commonfolk of Westeros, I'd argue, through the point of view of Daenerys and her own struggle for liberation, which is later expanded to a wider cause.

The Others are Otherised by their very name, by their very nature; they're not human, they're one of the most explicitly supernatural things in the setting, they open the very first book with a sense of dread. And yet, dragons such as Viserion can be granted sympathy and characterisation; GRRM is not unfamiliar with dealing with non-human characters in his other works. And yet, as he compares the Wall to Hadrian's Wall, don't we know that what lies beyond - in the Lands of Always Winter, in Scotland - are people? People who wage warfare and who laugh and sing, and who love and are torn apart between duty and passion?

To me, there's an intense disconnect between a profoundly humanist story, by an author who is notably critical of the usage of orcs and similar threats in fantasy literature, and the idea of an all-encompassing, apocalyptic and manichean conflict in the Battle for the Dawn; it's a deeply myopic worldview, and it is, indeed... Well, Melisandre who calls for it!

For what it's worth, I do not think that Stannis and Melisandre are characters to be taken entirely at face value - particularly when for a majority of ASoS, the word demon is used particularly to invoke *fire* - to invoke both wildfire, in the memories of the Blackwater, and to invoke R'hllor in Davos' perspective.

I'd continue on and talk a bit about my theories for the Others - the ideas of them as spirits, as creations of the Children of the Forest, as oathkeepers and Starks (I find the idea of them being oathkeepers is very interesting, and ties into some of Mance's story). Unfortunately, that'll have to be kept to another post, if I do write it, because I think the point of this one is very clear - to think of a Battle for the Dawn as the central point, to think of A Song of Ice and Fire as a story that serves to fundamentally legitimise the violence and warring against an enemy that is Otherised, seems to me to be missing the point. I sincerely hope that if The Winds of Winter comes out, we'll have a fresh insight into who, exactly, they are, but I've no doubt it'll be a more interesting explanation than "people you can murder without feeling guilt over it".

[ebitenpura]

*jolts upright* you know what would be crazy. if "Jadus" was a spirit of the mask and the Sith body he inhabits is just a vessel.

[rapha-reads]

Am I supposed to take advantage of the night to keep working on my thesis, of which I've barely completed 1/9th (discounting research, abstract, introduction, structure and bibliography)? Yes. Am I instead reading my second novel of the day? Yes. Should I go to bed instead because it's 4am? Yes.

Earlier today I read This is How You Lose the Time War, that I had been meaning to check ever since it was published, and it was gorgeous. Really beautiful, the letters, the descriptions of the multiple universes, times and planets visited, the ways Red and Blue work, the emotions... Pure joy.

Right now I'm reading The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, and it is fascinating. I love a good scifi book, especially a scifi book that really takes into consideration the vastness of space and how varied other species and planets could be. Also punching holes through subspace sounds like a pure adrenaline trip and I'm deeply interested and captivated.

Anyway. Thesis is not progressing, deadline is getting closer. I should stop reading and start writing at some point. Meh. Stress levels are still not optimal. Stars aren't aligned. Need more adrenaline.

[soulsxng]

Me: You know, the more I think about it, the more I'm starting to believe that there's a good chance that Tahariel is going to end up dying in the royalty verse, at some point. With how many problems he's going to have caused pretty soon here, there's not going to be much I can do to keep people awa--

"My sincerest apologies, but I believe I must have misheard you."

[unproduciblesmackdown]

billions also comedy gold presenting winston as a scapegoat for abuse culture fans when it's like but hey it can't be actual scapegoating if you Enjoy It or consider it Justified or experience Reassurance from Its Opportunity For A Group Cohesion Substitute For A Cohesion Based On An Inherent Equal Degree Of Belonging, The Absence Of Which Allows For, Encourages, Reinforces, & Rewards Scapegoating

it can't be Bullying if someone's Weird or you Just Don't Personally Like Them or Nobody's Actually Stopping You, Maybe At Least If They Don't See Too Much Of It, Maybe Others Are Supporting It

it can't be Abuse if you're just doing things Normally or are Following Rules or Aren't Feeling Malicious And Aren't Getting Divine Revelations Otherwise and probably it's just that a lot of abnormal people are being whiny &/or unfair &/or the Real malicious ones. kinda just like how that scapegoat is the real person ruining everything and really just forcing you to treat them like this

[sherdnerd]

Seeing New Vegas fans go absolutely apeshit over lore contradictions

[arolesbianism]

Guys why is rain world so good (<- rewatched some scenes and teared up on all of them)

[heavencasteel420]

Does anyone have floating ideas that just kind of attach (and sometimes detach/reattach) to different WIPs?