#giant structures

[shironezuninja]

If I didn’t own the rare Uncut 4Kids Yugioh & Shaman King dub DVD singles, I wouldn’t be teasing TAS Spidey saying the quote: “Come With Me, Yugi…Down to Hell”, through one of my collage projects.

[bluelectricblu]

We all remember my little disclaimer about not being good at painting yes okay great please tell me you can see her. I’m trying to imply a cow

[diabolicalevil]

odd thing just happened!!!!!

was sitting on my front step stripping my nail polish (the acetone fumes. oh god the fumes) and I saw one of the Imperial Fists that come by regularly (maybe patrol? I have no idea but I live near an astartes base so) and he was staring at me for a WHILE. I waved and after like 10 minutes he came up to me and announced that the structural integrity of my house was compromised? lmao?? said yeah probably it's like 200 years old and it's leaning to the left he was visibly perturbed by that. another minute goes by of him loitering and I ask if he wanted to have a look, like what's the harm if he raises a concern I can call a professional & according to the tumbly IF loove architecture.

he's probably a primaris or whatever cause he is visibly too big for my old ass house lol. so like I have these giant cracks going up the walls and upon seeing them he drags me outside immediately calling it a "danger to my health and safety" anyway im back on the front step and all I hear is cartoon banging from inside. lord knows what he's doing in there

[pianokantzart]

Thinking again about the weird design choices Illumination made for King Boo. Specifically his mouth size.

Like, the difference in size between the movie and the games is legitimately jarring.

I can’t help but wonder if he’s designed that way with the intention of eventually having him speak full sentences and display nuanced facial expressions in a future movie.

Now, there are fan animators that have shown King Boo speaking and displaying a range of emotions while staying true to his original design, but you can’t deny that there is a bit of quirk in the way he forms syllables with his lack of lips and 4 enormous protruding top teeth, and I’m sure these little quirks would only stand out all the more on an ultra-high-def-movie-quality rig.

I’m not saying that Illumination made the right choice by altering his mouth as much as they did, but… if my guess is correct, and they’re modeling him with the intention of giving him a more involved role in the future… I hope they find a workaround that lets King Boo keep his hideously enormous maw, because his little cameo in The Super Mario Bros. Movie doesn’t quite look right.

[texanmarcusdavenport]

I really like the idea of Marcus being a "failed android". His programming isn't seamless; he has odd reactions to certain events, he gets confused easily, he's overemotional. His internal world/self-esteem is entirely based on others' direction and approval. He's messy and disorganized while also having a perfectionist, compulsive personality. He gets fixated on odd things. His hearing is sensitive but not good at picking out distinct sounds; his vision is 70/20 but he's incapable of seeing 'the bigger picture'. He can't recognize faces. He can't see or touch screens that well. He's not a programming whiz or math genius; he actually hates technology.

He may be a feat of engineering and a mechanical marvel, but for all intents and purposes he's a fairly average autistic dude with a personality disorder.

[froschli96]

You know what, fuck it, I have to speak my truth! (this is gonna be a rant, so anyone who actually likes assassin's creed revelations and/or the secret crusade, be warned or maybe don't read this at all)

remember how altaïr talks to king richard at the end of ac1, and richard is like "[humans] come into the world kicking and screaming, violent and unstable. it is what we are. we cannot help ourselves."? and how altaïr answers "no. we are what we choose to be." and how that ACTUALLY has meaning bc he himself was "violent and unstable" at the beginning of the game but he has learned and is now CHOOSING to be a better person who cares about others and humanity at large? remember how his calmness and gentleness was something that he ACQUIRED over the course of the story?

and remember how in revelations they then suddenly had a PRE-AC1 altaïr say about the first of his targets "no man should pass from this world without knowing some kindness." and be all wise and calm and collected during a nice little chat with al mualim, who suddenly acts all fatherly? (like, this is suddenly supposed to be a positive relationship? what??)

also, during the confession the target says to altair: "you put too much faith in the hearts of men, altaïr. [...] humans are weak, base, and petty." and altaïr answers: "no. our creed is evidence to the contrary." KJASJFJDKL???? like, it’s almost insulting how close this exchange is to the one with richard. you know, the one that was actually earned after a whole game of character development. like WTF??? cool congrats now that development means nothing. like, apparently that was just altaïr reverting BACK to being the exemplary assassin who understands and believes in the creed that he was apparently just born as. (i also hate how having a young inexperienced altaïr saying this implies that altaïr's faith in humanity is a sign of naivete instead of a sign of the wisdom he has gained after being confronted with counter arguments for a whole game, and also something that distinguishes the assassins from the templars who use humanity's supposed wickedness to justify controlling them like in AC1, but whatever)

altaïr’s development in AC1 mattered BECAUSE he is not NATURALLY a good person, it actually said something about humanity's capacity for both bad AND good and how humans don't have to be forced to be good through mind control bc they can by their own free will choose to be better when taught how and when allowed the freedom to grow. but no. apparently altaïr has just always been calm, wise and gentle. and he just sort of forgot about that during AC1 bc…. ? bc of adha?? bc of abbas???

oh don’t get me started on the whole abbas thing. (it doesnt even make sense that abbas is so hung up about his father and "his family’s honor", like what about the whole point of al mualim not allowing parents to be close to their children bc it would make them weak? like, my dude, you’re not supposed to HAVE any family aside from the brotherhood)

they used the throwaway character that had like 5 lines and made him into altaïr’s main antagonist in revelations… like, abbas wasn’t supposed to be this ONE dude who had personal beef with altaïr, he was just supposed to show how while altaïr’s revered by many, a lot of his brothers also hate him, bc 1) altaïr is a shitty person at this point and 2) bc there’s no real feeling of community and family in this version of the brotherhood, but just a pervasive sense of competition and jealousy — these assassins don’t care about their goal of safeguarding humanity bc they’re too hung up on petty squabbles and divided by rivalries (you know, the things that made malik hate altaïr even before solomon’s temple and that he overcomes in the end which enables him to forgive and to reconcile with altaïr so they can work together and stop al mualim? (you ever just think about "we are one. as we share the glory of our victories, so too should we share the pain of our defeat. in this way we grow closer. we grow stronger." and cry? bc i do. all the time. malik, the man that you are))

and now abbas is altaïr’s childhood best friend turned lifelong enemy?? like, bowden bent over backwards to come up with an explanation for why altaïr is an arrogant ass at the beginning of AC1, when the explanation is right there: he was raised to kill without asking questions and was constantly praised for how good he is at murder, which resulted in him becoming arrogant and disregarding human life. like, it doesn’t have to be some shakespearean family feud type shit. and guess what, this "simple" explanation actually plays into the story’s themes, who’da thunk!

(like, abbas might not have been a "fleshed out" character in AC1, but he had a specific function and now that function is gone. mr bowden, mr mcdevitt, you know characters are allowed to simply exist to tell us something about their worlds and the systems they live in and sometimes that’s more important and also more interesting than having every single character have a detailed backstory to explain all their behaviors, right?)

with all of this revelations loses all nuance in regards to the levantine brotherhood and also the creed in general. like, altaïr being a master assassin at the beginning despite being a terrible person and not actually understanding the creed is a criticism of the brotherhood and the creed itself. like, it said something about the order that someone like altaïr was able to get that high in rank, simply bc he's good at killing, which also tells us what is considered important in the al mualim era assassin order. when you make altaïr’s arrogance the result of his personal conflicts instead of how we was raised by a brotherhood that only valued one's ability to kill, you lose that characterization of the assassin order itself!

and by suddenly making al mualim a semi good "father figure" you also downplay his manipulation of not only altaïr but all those under his care. (altaïr says something about al mualim being "as a father" to him exactly twice in the codex, but he doesn’t mean by that that he WAS a father to him, what he means is that he was the CLOSEST THING he had bc HE DID NOT HAVE PARENTS, not because his mother died in childbirth and his father was executed when he was young btw, BUT BECAUSE IT WASN’T ALLOWED, like his parents actually lived but weren’t allowed to be close to him, he says he came to view al mualim’s "weak and dishonest" love as enough and even better BECAUSE HE HAD NOTHING ELSE, BECAUSE AL MUALIM ISOLATED HIS ASSASSINS FROM THEIR FAMILIES. al mualim "loved" him bc he was good at killing people for him! hm, i wonder if this could be trying to say anything about cults and indoctrination and the inherent contradiction in fighting for peace and free will by taking children away from their parents and raising them to become killers?? like, altaïr wasn't ~the special orphan boy~ taken in by al mualim bc his father died a hero's death, it was "the way of the order" to have al mualim be the closest thing to a parental figure for everyone to ensure absolute loyalty! altaïr saying al mualim was like his father is not supposed to make you go "oh, he must have actually been a good guy for altaïr to consider him a father", it should make you go "oh that's kinda fucked up that he considers the dude who made him into a killing machine and who manipulated him a sort of father figure"!)

and then in revelations they suddenly portray that relationship as positive and healthy??? like, it would be one thing to give it some nuance by delving into the psychology behind al mualim’s "love" and maybe showing how al mualim did care about altair in a complicated, fraught sort of way (like, you know, there’s a lot of interesting things you could say about al mualim at several points addressing altaïr as "my child" in AC1 and how that parallels Garnier referring to the people he drugged and abused as his "children", and what that says about how the templars view the people who they say they want to save and in whose best interests they supposedly act (in any case, al mualim doesn’t use that phrase because he has any real parental feelings but rather to patronize and to invalidate any objections, like in a "mother knows best" way))

but they even fucking DARE to parallel that relationship with that of altaïr and darim in revelations, by having the reflection in the puddle of darim hugging altaïr showing altaïr hugging al mualim…. like their relationship wasn’t inherently abusive but just tragically cut short because al mualim was just "corrupted by the apple"… like WHAT???? so it’s not the very real problems like grooming, manipulation and indoctrination and the hierarchical structure of the brotherhood itself (all of which are antithetical to the assassin ideology), it was just the evil apple all along. great. that’s DEFINITELY a lot more interesting.

god im sorry i really dont want to spread negativity but this is driving me INSANE. like, somebody please tell me im not crazy bc i feel like somehow most of the fandom is in agreement that revelations and the secret crusade have better storytelling and characterization than ac1.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, can we talk about how, even IF we completely ignore AC1 and treat revelations altaïr as his own character…. the narrative still doesn’t really work?

basically, the whole point of his story in rev is that "he gave his whole life to the brotherhood", this obsession led to him not using his time with his family which has him ending up dying alone in a dark library and this in turn makes ezio reevaluate his life choices…. except. he doesn’t? neglect? his family? or whatever? like, his devotion to the assassins is sort of painted as this tragic flaw that leads to a lonely death bc it supposedly comes at the cost of his family, but… his wife has joined the assassins, (at least) one of his sons is in the brotherhood and even when he goes to protect the assassins against the mongols, he takes his family with him (except for the son who stays behind bc he has a family of his own and who, ironically, ends up dying bc of that)… like, you can’t describe altaïr as a good husband and father in the database and have his son tell him that "everything that is good in me began with you, father" when they say goodbye, and then want to make us believe that he put his family behind the brotherhood and that that is a character flaw that leads to his tragedy.

because you HAVE to have a character’s tragedy be the result of a character flaw. like. that is how tragedies work. otherwise it just becomes tragedy for the sake of tragedy which is… boring bc it has no purpose. and we know it is SUPPOSED to have purpose bc ezIO FUCKING QUITS BEING AN ASSASSIN AFTER WITNESSING IT!

it’s like they want to have their cake and eat it, too — they didn’t want to actually make altaïr a bad husband/father, but still wanted to make his life a tragedy where he loses his family which is why instead they outsource all responsibility to abbas who now has to be the reason for ALL the deaths.

like, they try to make at least maria’s death kind of sort of the result of altaïr’s rashness or whatever but like… these guys KILLED THEIR SON and TOLD HIM THAT ALTAÏR HAD ORDERED HIS DEATH. like, altaïr losing it in response to that is not rash, it’s fucking logical and justified! if anything the scene made me angry at maria for trying to stop him. like, GIRL, he was YOUR son too??? but god forbid we give female characters actual real emotions, she has to fill the role of "voice of reason who dies for altaïr’s man pain" i fucking guess.

like, it’s this weird mix where his tragedy is simultaneously painted as his own fault but also not really bc abbas is the one responsible for all the shit that happens. it just… it just doesn’t really go together.

the only way to make his story make sense narratively and to give it actual purpose is by looking at it in the context of ezio’s story, bc the things he sees in altaïr’s memories are supposed to be a revelation (ha!) to ezio specifically. and i guess that’s maybe the crux of it all — altaïr’s story in revelations was conceived of first and foremost to support ezio’s story and development. which is probably also why many people maybe don’t notice bc, having skipped ac1 and started with ac2, the majority of people mostly care only about ezio and only really appreciate altaïr’s story in as far as it serves to push ezio forward. (tho i’ve also seen a few people say that ezio is also written kind of weird in rev, but i’ve never really been an ezio girly myself so i can’t speak to the truth of that)

like, altaïr dying alone in the library doesn’t really have to make sense for his character, i guess, bc it’s only really supposed to be a cautionary tale for ezio.

so, i guess, for once, they actually had a MAN dying for another man’s character development, which is pretty woke actually. ubisoft, i take everything back jksdsfjhgdsahfhsdhfghfdsgjhsdgjh

[xenomorphicdna]

This is an on the string propaganda post

Brought to you, by me (with love)

It's time for machine comforts. Comforts we can't understand, or experience. Let them be happy, let them be at peace with their body.

Does a breath of cool water feel nice on their systems? When it's quiet do they listen to their own heart and feel the electricity pulsing? Does it remind them that they are alive and a part of this world? Do they have dreams? Hopes and projects they wish to work on, hobbies?

Why get off the string into the harsh and deadly world, fighting for survival and losing everything they've ever known to love about themselves?

What about the safety of their bodies? How scary would it be for a machine with thousands, maybe millions of throughs to suddenly have just a handful. The horror of everything going silent.

They have hundreds of eyes to see the world for all its beauty, they capture moments that would otherwise go unseen. Why blind themselves of such things?

[stanlees-stuff]

What’s an average day like for Mike and Ez?

mkay so lets see if i still got this >:]

well they're usually on the move but once in a while they find a potential tribe they can work with and do their tried and true formula:

after they usually just chill and hang out with the locals then back on the road they go

anyways bye >:]

[katsigian]

Finally putting my political science/international affairs bachelors degree to use by hammering out the complex and intricate vampiric socio-political and ethno-cultural structures existing in my worldbuild

Did u know that my 8 vampire species, who are nearly as old as the first humans, function within a form of social authority that leans towards meritocracy and gets dangerously close to oligarchy when the mood strikes. Fun stuff

[mynorse-verse]

Finally checking Grimm's Teutonic Mythology, and got to the infamous Loki-Logi identification. I wasn't expecting this part to be as funny as it was.

No, I was not expecting him to go like "Also Odin is Kári, so I guess Hoenir is Aegir... Which I'm not sure how it works at all". It should be at that point he realizes something is faulty, but for some reason he's adamant in making Loki the figure Caesar identified with Vulcan (rather than I don't know, Völundr/Wayland?). And that's when things for sure take a turn:

Since he himself realizes it makes no sense he decides to go "Loki=Prometheus=Logi=Vulcan=Grendel=Saturn=Saturday (Lauderdag)=Satan". No, he's not able to make this work either, and in fact proceeds to debunk the Grendel part. He then partially debunks the Prometheus part by somehow using all the wrong sources, yet the conclusion he reaches is somehow actually right.

By that point one would have either gotten back on their tracks, something he's actually willing to do in the future for other figures if newer sources were to be found; or just fully embrace the bullshit. Once again within the same paragraph, Grimm is actually willing to consider alternative theories and is more than welcome to discuss other sources. For example, when talking about Phol, he's adamant in connecting him to Baldr; but he knows there's the possibility Phol is an independent figure, Freyr or even Ullr, and admits he might be wrong in his prior identification and the reader should also consider the other theories and expect further sources. This is a nice thing. This shows Grimm knows he's not infallible, and that critical thought should therefore prevail.

AND YET he can't come to wrap his head about the fact Loki and Logi may not be the same, and may not be related to any of the other figures he tries to connect them to make it work. He's way too deep into this bullshit and seems to hold this theory in such high regard (even though he wasn't even the one coming with it in the first place!), he just disregards any common sense and proceeds to discuss goddesses as soon as possible.

And here I was worried my hypothetical work of fiction could be way too derivative for huh (checking my own notes) using continental and western figures and myths or playing around with figures and family trees. The moral of the story is don't feel too pressed about (supposed) accuracy regarding your fiction, because Grimm himself didn't obviously care about it either.

[the-storm-chaser]

//So....uh....I did some brainstorming

Can you tell when it all went to shit?

[rbxl-wanderer]

BÉT∅N C∅NCR̸ETE

by C∅NCR̸ETE S̸TRU̸CTURE

[fantajoseph]

Hate "against all authority except my mom" so much tbh

[ceiling-karasu]

Hi, just want to let you know that I’ve always enjoy reading your tags, it’s a lot of fun reading your clever insights and observations on my arts. I really appreciate them.✨

Your art improve amazingly over these past few months and I’m looking forward to the direction it will take in the future. I also admire your dedication when it comes to writing, finishing 30+ chapters series is definitely not an easy tasks and I think that’s really cool. \(^^ )

Thank you very much! I'm looking forward to completing another 30+ chapters series in the future.

I really like your art and how the color schemes seem to match the personalities of the characters. They always look so crisp with the right amount of style on character positioning.

I always thought it was really cool how you managed to have so much detailed backstories and world building, alongside managing to create pictures and comics to go along with the chapters and stories you write. It has been really inspirational!

Although, funny, enough, I have been thinking about asking you if you had any preferences on sources to start researching universal aviation codes and the differences in between civilian and military planes, jets, helicopters, and airships, and which you think might sound better when used by militaries vs civilians. I think I am going to have to do a lot of studying on IATA, ICAO, PAT, Mode-S, VFR, and transponders, as well as codes used in towered vs non towered airports. I feel like I am going to have to do a lot of study on aviation and plane/jet/drone schematics for future chapters.

[orcelito]

Being in a data governance class makes it so weird to watch the shit that tech giants are continuously pulling. I see them mass data scraping for AI training and I'm like. But Wait. What about GDPR??? Hello??? User privacy and right to access/correct/delete??? I know that's an EU thing but other places have their own data protection acts too!!! And they're pulling these moves that communicate such flagrant disrespect and irresponsibility for the handling of user data.

In the IT courses I've taken, they've taught us something that's really stuck with me: "Just because we can doesn't mean we should."

My data governance professor keeps emphasizing that as IT personnel, we will need to have a much higher sense of integrity than most other fields bc we have access to SO MUCH SHIT. IT and tech industries are so under-regulated bc of how relatively new it all is and how slow the law moves. But people in charge of handling user data should keep in mind that this is data about Real People, and capitalizing off of it is a violation of privacy.

But tech giants don't care. They'll keep poking and prodding, trying to capitalize off of users' data in order to earn as much money as they can. Data regulations like GDPR exist, but they don't cover everyone, and tech giants are more of "Do First, ask forgiveness later". Or in this case, pay the fines later. Bc if they violate GDPR, they Will be paying fines. And maybe they'll even change the way they handle the data... for EU citizens.

The rest of us are fucked tho. Tech giants really don't care. They just view us as assets to profit off of.

[egglygreg]

Yet another inexplicably vivid YA dream with an almost coherent narrative structure:

A warm Northern Kingdom, constantly at odds with the cold Southern Kingdom. Both places have extremely advanced technology but it's very old and they don't necessarily know how to use/fix/make more of it.

There have been recent battles over ancient tech, the north has been targeted by the south.

Our POV character is the Northern Princess, a young woman with golden red hair and deep red eyes.

The princess, desperate to get out of the castle and go riding, takes her horse and sneaks out of the secret gate in the gardens behind the palace.

While out riding, she is captured by southerners. They take her back to their city in the icefields, which the northerners have been unable to find for many long years.

The place they take her to is a mechanical structure her people had managed to locate, but had dismissed as just a strange ruin of ancient defunct technology.

Her captors lead her onto it, and the machine activates and begins to shift. Strange walls of energy spring up, which the southerners walk her through. The colour of the energy changes from blue to red, and a loud mechanical voice announces "royal blood recognised."

Her captors seem taken aback for a moment, before they walk her forward to a strange box in the middle of the mechanism. One young man, who has been quite kind to her despite being a kidnapper, steps into it with her, and then suddenly and very quickly they drop

down

down

down

under the ice and through the water, in the small glass-like box.

The Princess becomes terrified and panicked, crying and shaking and absolutely petrified. In her panic she starts lashing out and hitting the walls, desperate to get back to the surface. Her captor tries to calm her down, gripping her upper arms and pulling her back against himself, while speaking gently and kindly to her despite his own confusion over her reaction.

(For him and all his people this was a perfectly normal trip, but she had never experienced anything like a deep sea elevator before).

The box brings them into the centre of a large and fairly busy town square. She is the first northerner in memory to set foot in the southern city, an enormous structure hidden beneath the icy ocean.

It was much colder in the city than she was used to.

She is taken through the streets and into an impressive and strange room. She and her captor stand before a throne, and on it sits the southern king, a middle aged man with brown hair and a very stern and harrowed expression. He asks the young man who the girl is, and seems somehow both pleased and very stressed to hear she is the princess of the North.

While she is technically a prisoner, she is given mostly free reign to wander the city. A young woman is assigned as her guide/guard, though the young man who first brought her down to the city comes around quite often to check in on her.

She feels so cold in this strange place that she takes to wearing a blanket over her shoulders, and one of her favourite places to go is near the city's great engines where the heat is highest. Most of the southerners find the place uncomfortably hot and avoid it.

(Unfortunately story-wise that's all I've got, because that's when I woke up. For me though it was a relief, because being deep underwater in a submerged vessel is literally one of my worst nightmares and I'm also pretty claustrophobic, so that's the reason the princess lost her mind in the deep sea elevator. I was seeing from her pov at the time and I was legit terrified 😅 Even the handsome love interest didn't help)