#complete failure

[blueskittlesart]

knowledge long forgotten

got really into reading item descriptions on this playthrough. anyway did you know the silent princess is one of the only raw materials with a cooking effect to not explicitly list that effect in its description

[specialagentartemis]

My feelings about queernormative worlds in SFF is that I can often enjoy it, but I rarely believe it.

Almost everything surrounding gender, sex, and sexuality, and all the different social norms and expectations that different cultures build up around them, derive ultimately from the various realities of sexual activity and pregnancy: who can have it, who can’t, for how long, who does have it, who doesn’t, and what that means for society. I’m not being bioessentialist here, because human bodies are all quite different and different cultures develop different ways to react to that, and rates of and reactions to fertility can be different, and what different sexual and gender roles mean in different cultures and who can and can’t embody them can get extremely different. (Hell, how pregnancy itself even works can be different depending on where you live, what your lifestyle is like, and what your diet consists of!) But like, the reason gender even matters, historically, has been because of reproduction. And the reason reproduction matters, in agricultural societies anyway, has very often been because of property ownership and the need to work on farms.

So I’m totally here for queernormative worlds. But to interest me you have to answer the questions of: okay, but how does your culture work though, and how is kinship structured, and how is reproduction seen, and how is property inheritance understood, and how does gender fit into all this, for me to feel like you’ve actually tried. (And don’t say that there ARE no norms, so no one falls outside of them. There’s no culture where that’s true.)

Sci-fi worlds can get away with this easier than fantasy worlds, imo. Partially because they can posit that it is our future but we’ve gone through all of the Social Justice Struggles already and solved them, but also because technology can really alter all of these topics. The Vorkosigan Saga, for instance, makes it clear that Beta Colony is as gender-egalitarian and free-love as it is because of contraception and uterine replicators, which FULLY decouple “the ability to have children” from “the need for anyone to be pregnant.” This is huge, and the Vorkosigan Saga treats it as appropriately so! Ancillary Justice is another one that thinks a lot about how the genderless culture that decenters romance as a core social organizing principle works. But I read so many low-ish-tech fantasy worlds that are happily queernormative and gender doesn’t matter and they just feel shallow. I don’t believe this world. I don’t dislike it, exactly, I just don’t believe it, I don’t believe people would be like this because you’ve put no effort into imagining a world that works like this makes any sense.

Which is totally fine for people’s D&D games and cute oneshot comics and personal works and such, but when you want me to take your worldbuilding seriously, you’re going to have to convince me! And a lot of it is not convincing.

[t00thpasteface]

don't talk to me until i've pondered my orb

(cat meme from here)

[uisceb]

Endlessly baffled every time I see people water down Glinda’s actions in Defying Gravity to “oh she was too cowardly or too selfish to stand by Elphaba,” as if she didn’t spend that entire sequence from Chistery’s transformation onward doing everything in her very limited power to keep Elphaba safe.

Like the second things start going wrong, Glinda’s entire focus switches to “keep Elphaba safe at all costs.” This girl does not have any magic. She does not have any physical survival skills. She probably has no idea how to throw a punch. She can barely run in those heels. Her one power is her charm and her ability to work a crowd. She is desperately trying to get Elphaba to come back with her not because she agrees with what the Wizard and Morrible are doing, but because she thinks maybe if she can just smooth things over, Elphaba will be forgiven, and she’ll be safe. 

In that regard, there’s a very obvious selfishness to Glinda’s actions - she lacks perspective; she lacks scope; she prioritizes Elphaba over what we as the audience would understand as the “Greater Good” and over her own morals about what’s going on with the Wizard’s agenda; she’s visibly horrified by what happens to Chistery but her first instinct is to comfort Elphaba above all else, despite having no understanding of what's happening.

I am the last person who’s ever going to argue that Glinda isn’t selfish, because she very clearly is, it’s one of her defining characteristics, and it’s one of the main things she has to learn to overcome in order to actually become “Glinda the Good.” This is in no way me trying absolve my very selfish girl who very much made the wrong decision.

But it does kinda boggle my mind when I see the argument that Glinda betrayed Elphaba or is a “fake friend.” Especially because ultimately she comes to the conclusion that the best thing she can do for Elphaba in this moment is to let her go. She knows she would only hinder Elphaba if she were to go with her, she knows there’s no happy ending for them if she tries to run away with her (I think in that moment she might even suspect there’s no happy ending at all). Elphaba is going through her own personal revelation which is beautiful in its own right, but it’s also impulsive, and there’s a certain level of unsustainable grandiose fantasy to it. Glinda almost lets herself be swept up in it for a moment, but her rational side kicks in, because, of the main trio, Glinda really is the most grounded in reality.

I’ve seen a lot of weirdly smug people out there proudly saying if Fiyero was there he definitely would’ve gotten on the broom with Elphaba - and honestly, I think they’re probably right. But it’s not because he’s somehow morally superior to Glinda, or that his love for Elphaba is more pure. Our boy is depressed, he’s nihilistic, he’s lost, and truly doesn’t have any attachments to anyone.

He was genuinely moved by Elphaba’s fearless convictions and he fell hard and fast for her, so I agree he’d be on that broom in a heartbeat, he quite literally has nothing to lose, and everything to gain. He’s found himself wanting to believe in something for the first time because Elphaba brought that out in him, his whole world revolves around her. And that’s very romantic, but because of that, the stakes are much lower. For him, leaving everything behind wouldn’t be a sacrifice, it would be freedom.

Glinda’s gone through the world much differently, much more carefully. She doesn’t have Fiyero’s sense of nihilism or detachment, she’s lashed herself tight to the reality of the world around her. Where Fiyero has been regularly kicked out of schools and freely wandered from place to place experiencing new things and getting into trouble on purpose, Glinda has never stepped outside the predictable comfort and safety of her bubble until meeting Elphaba. She lives in constant fear of failure and being looked down on. She is forever clinging to this persona she’s created because she’s terrified of what will happen if she’s anything less than perfect.

She has constructed her entire existence around being an icon rather than a person - in the beginning, she literally doesn’t know how to be her own self, she’s just barely learning, because of Elphaba. And it scares the shit out of her. 

Fiyero would likely play action hero if he was there for Defying Gravity, and that’s great, but Glinda is weighing a million things in her head, not least of which is “holy shit the person I love most in the world is in imminent danger and I have no magic and no strength to keep her safe, so I will beg and plead and insult and fight her tooth and nail to keep her with me inside my privileged bubble because maybe I can smooth this over, maybe everything will be okay if I just do what I always do and use my privilege to get my way.” She understands the rules of her world, so she’s going to play by those rules because that’s how you win the game.

Elphaba, of course, refuses to play a corrupt game at all, and Glinda gets angry - she lashes out at Elphaba because Elphaba has just put herself in such a dangerous situation, and Glinda is completely powerless to change it. Every little bit of control Glinda is used to having is obliterated.

Her “Maybe you’re not as powerful as you think you are” when Elphaba doesn’t grow wings is so desperate - the words border on cruel, but her tone is both painfully apologetic and above all filled with RELIEF because while her heart hurts for Elphaba, she’s terrified that Elphaba would hurt herself the way Chistery was hurt, and she’s cleaving to the hope that maybe if Elphaba isn’t as powerful as she thinks she is, Glinda stands a chance at undoing the damage, and protecting her. 

Glinda’s selfishness is just so fascinating to me because it’s so rich and so contradictory - she loves Elphaba so deeply and destructively that she fully paralyzes herself when the chips are down and it breaks them both. She fails to be what Elphaba wants her to be, and she fails to be a good person, but there’s no “fake friend” about her actions - she is acting on pure desperation to keep this person she loves safe in literally the only way she knows how, at the cost of everything else, including what’s right, which is something Elphaba could never abide by. Elphaba would never compromise her own morals, but at this point in the story Glinda is willing to compromise everything as long as Elphaba is tucked away in her bubble with her, and that difference in values is irreconcilable to both of them. 

So, realizing this, Glinda does the one last thing she can think of to protect her at this point, and wraps a cloak around her shoulders to keep her warm. That’s all that’s left.

She’s selfish and she’s cowardly and she’s brave and she’s loving and she fails Elphaba and she fails herself and she regrets her decision for the rest of her life and yes I am writing all this with glass under my tongue and between my teeth, she makes me insane.

[lil0-0blume]

I tried making brownie but it didn’t work… again… 🥲🫠🫠

Why does every food I try to cook tastes so bland and have a boring appearance??

[anti-rop]

ah yes, because that's always what Narnia has needed..."a new take"...and that's always what Narnia has suffered from...a lack of "Rock 'N' Roll." tweet | deadline interview

[fishyfutaba]

maybe i will admit to liking alec hardy just a little

[extended-play]

BREEZE BUNNY!

[itsahotminuteinbetween]

continuation of this (got away with it this time)

(another one)

[wenteltrap]

idk is this anything?

[torpublishinggroup]

Murderbot is MurderBACK in the next installment of Martha Wells’s NYT bestselling Murderbot Diaries series System Collapse 🤖🚀

WHAT’S IT ABOUT

Following the events of Network Effect, our favorite lethally cybernetic television fiend has done the previously unthinkable: agreed to accompany the sentient spaceship Perihelion (dubbed ART by Murderbot, short for Asshole Research Transport) and crew on its next mission. 

Unfortunately, they’re not going to get too far. 

Having failed to harvest dangerous artifacts from their target planet by way of Murderbot misadventure, the Barish-Estranza corporation is much angered and determined to recoup their considerable losses. And when you’re a lethally opportunistic space corp, blood and muscle are valuable currency. 

Murderbot, ART’s crew, and the Preservation humans have planetside work to do as Barish-Estranza seeks to claim the planet’s beleaguered colony as a conscripted workforce. 

But for Murderbot, the challenge is as internal as it is external. Something is deeply, deeply wrong with it. Normal operational parameters are unmet, but with the corp’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams en route, Murderbot needs to resolve its issues, and fast!

[bumblingbabooshka]

Fem Spock baby crush on Spring because he's the most feminine looking boy ever. She was so sullen about being married to a boy but after meeting him she perked right up.

This one and only time she's ever felt anything even approaching romantic interest in a boy will keep her from exploring the possibility of her being a lesbian for over two decades.

When Spring ends their betrothal (she's on Pike's enterprise) Spock gets this feeling of freedom mixed with dread/anxiety in the pit of her stomach. There's feelings of inadequacy (Spring's message simply says he's found someone he's more compatible with and Spock didn't know him well or really WANT to marry him but the rejection still hurts, as much as she'd like that not to be the case)...relief that she won't have to have sex with a veritable stranger when the time comes, and the dread...will she have to find another man to marry?? She'd used Spring's existence as something of an excuse not to pursue or think about romance with anyone but without it... For some reason the thought of being romantically interested in a man is incomprehensible to her and the thought of a man romantically interested in HER is actively unappealing. Spock decides that this is because she's Vulcan. The most Vulcan Vulcan there is. And she doesn't have any Vulcan friends to fact check her so! She'll just stay celibate the rest of her life! Surely nothing will derail this plan. Somewhere, lightyears away, Jeanette Kirk sneezes.

[soriastrider]

this has almost certainly been done before, but i think it's funny so i did it anyway

original:

[secretly-a-catamount]

tim drake would rather die than kill innocent people and tim drake killed hundreds of supervillain henchpeople with long-range detonation explosives that one time are two separate headcanons that, contrary to what the fandom discourse would have you believe, can actually coexist at the same time.

there’s even a psychologist term for it.

it’s called compartmentalization!

[dragonqueenstormwitch]

i wonder how that one guard is doing after having inej ghafa hold him at knifepoint and say “i like it when men beg. but this isn’t the time for it” into his ear because personally i would never move on

[utilitycaster]

re the anti-resurrection poison though like. what the fuck was up with that. Like, I can, as a mediocre DM myself and an avid listener to NADDPod D&D Court understand where it came from: you needed a reason why Will and Derrig were still dead despite Keyleth being there, because that was Orym's backstory, which in turn dated back to Liam's concept for a backup character for Vax, ie, someone who had also lost a partner and would be sent to help Keyleth in the wake of a similar loss. So you come up with the anti-resurrection poison. And this also happens to work out nicely for the climactic solstice battle, because it explains why Keyleth can't just rally after Vax intervenes. It also makes sense as a thing the Ruby Vanguard would have, because of the anti-divine magic and the way that the Weave Mind have similar anti-healing powers.

The problem is, of course, that you've introduced this concept - which is, again, actually very good and elegant and fits in seamlessly - but it's out there and you have to either use it or come up with an excuse not to use it. And you can, I think, legitimately make a case for it not being in play in the Seat of Disdain fight because that came up very suddenly. But then it gets pretty weird that when Bells Hells become a consistent thorn in the Vanguard's side, and Otohan moves from "I need to keep the Ruidusborn alive but fuck everyone else" to "I'm just going to kill them all" and clearly knows they have considerable resurrection resources and access to the rare antidote given Keyleth's return to the stage that she doesn't just coat all weapons with it and nerf all healing to drain their resources.

And anyway this is a consistent problem, of like, there actually was the full setup for the story C3 intended to tell in C1 and C2 and early C3, but to make these entirely unrelated characters actually fit into a pretty specific narrative, you had to add in a bunch of complicated additions. And while some of those were a mess, some were actually really well done, like the initial introduction of the anti-resurrection poison and the gray assassins, and then none of it mattered because they were always just additions to make the core plot fit and there were too many balls in the air so they got dropped without exploration, and anyone paying attention was like "hey you dropped this" and it's like you could have juggled 3 or even 4 or 5 balls adequately, but you had to add in 4 extra balls and ultimately some of them landed on the ground and so the act of barely keeping 3 in the air in the end is undercut by the number you dropped.