#to step back and let THEM talk

[mayhaps-a-blog]

Also I love that despite having 3 of the 5 other members of the crew profess their attraction to them, Pin-Lee was completely surprised that Ratthi fell for them and not Arada.

[nellasbookplanet]

Okay but a thought of mine given new rise by the animated intro after having it niggle at the back of my mind for months now are Ludinus and Otohan as villains and who’s going to be standing as the final big bad at the end of the campaign, the way Vecna and Lucien did for c1 and c2.

Because the obvious answer is Ludinus. He’s the instigator, the leader of the cult, a villain in the making for 2 whole campaigns and over a thousand years (not to mention the one who's actually interacted with the party outside of fights). But Otohan is the one standing center stage of the villain line-up in the opening. She’s the one shown actively fighting the party. And, more importantly (as narrative matters more than barely glimpsed easter eggs), she's the one tied to the history and setting of Marquet, who has actual stakes in the people there and has fought for (and against) them before in the Apex War (while the place Ludinus called home was torn down centuries ago, leaving him caring for seemingly nothing but his ultimate goal since). She’s the one who’s actually Ruidusborn, and she’s tied to the Luxon as well with her strange magic. And despite all this, she’s mostly passed under the radar so far, given very little developments or motives or history or even personality. She’s little more than a cool aesthetic and a handful of threats.

And here’s my thought: maybe that’s on purpose. Ludinus, in his great arrogance, has placed himself as the greatest threat, and he’s being treated as such by the Hells. But is he? He steals immortality, appropriates the very concept of being Ruidusborn while holding a secret resentment for lacking the very powers it grants. He barely knows what he’s doing, and certainly not what he's about to unleash. And is there anything more satisfying than seeing a deeply arrogant and hubristic villain taken down by his own folly in underestimating those around him? So what if, as the final fight edges closer, the person actually holding the powers Ludinus pretends to steps up out of the shadows she placed herself in, keeping her motives to herself, barely remarked upon by Ludinus or the Hells or the audience, and personally cuts him down and takes her place as THE exalted Ruidusborn?

[raddest-laddest]

ok. someone’s gonna have to come get my dad or i’m gonna tweak.

[sukibenders]

I feel like, in the upcoming days given everything that is going on, it could be really beneficial if everyone (specifically Americans) researched and understood specific tactics such as pinkwashing and imperialist feminism and how many times those in positions of privilege use it to justify harm towards those (countries) they view as "lesser than" or "uncivilized" in comparison to them/their own.

[cyanrendipity]

You know, I used to think I hated poetry, sometimes I still have the feeling maybe I do? But then I realize I like it

I started hating poetry when I was a kid, I remember going thru my mom's huge collection of books and finding a really small book with a pale blue cover that caught my attention, I asked my mom if I could read it (there was adult books in her collection so I always asked) and she took it from my hands and laughed saying I wouldn't understand a poetry book, I was too young and it was way too complex for me, even adults can't understand it properly! I've always been a very spiteful person at my core, so that type of attitude just made me so mad I didn't want to touch the book anymore lmao

I encountered that gatekeeping time and time again relating to poetry, people talked about it like it was something beyond "the average person" like you had to have some sort of special understanding to "truly get it" and it just made me think "If I'm not good enough for poetry, poetry is not good enough for me"

After that whenever I encountered a poem that truly touched me I would pretend it was an exception, "surely poems cannot be good, they're made confusing on purpose to keep people out" I would think "This one is easy to understand it's not like 'those' poems" (don't even know which poems 'those' were)

Anyway it took a LONG time and encountering many types of poems written by many different people about many subjects until I realized, poems are in fact nor good or bad by nature, it's like any form of art, and it kinda made me mad at people who made me think it was something "only some" can understand and appreciate cause it kept me off from it for a long time.

[artnerd1123]

Finally watched tadc ep 4 and ;_;

Gangle……..

(Spoiler talk in the tags)

[m0thlegs]

I feel like people who brag about not letting their children (who aren't literal toddlers) on the internet at ALL and teach abstinence-only internet safety are just as dangerous as parents who let their kids have completely unrestricted and unmonitored internet access.

I mean... Yeah, in an ideal world, you might want to keep your kids off the internet. But we don't live in an ideal world, we live in a world where everything - and I mean EVERYTHING, is dependent on technology nowadays. By barring your child from the wisdom of how to navigate that world safely and knowledgably, you're barring them from a HUGE portion of opportunities and life skills that they'd need today.

Furthermore, if you start fearmongering and telling them that everyone you meet online is a scary dangerous pedophile, they're obviously not going to believe you, and then they WILL encounter an actual scary dangerous pedophile, because your idea of a "warning" was a skewed overexaggeration of reality that no child over the age of 11 or 12 would wholeheartedly believe.

I'm not saying that internet safety isn't important, or that you should let your kids roam free-range on the wide web, or that it's okay to turn your children into iPad kids, but THIS IS NOT INTERNET SAFTEY EDUCATION! YOU'RE SETTING YOUR CHILD UP FOR FAILURE! If you raise them like this without introducing them to any of the skills they'll need to navigate the online world, they're going to be taken advantage of as soon as they find a way to unlock the family computer and browse the web.

Part of the reason as to why internet safety education is so bad nowadays is also because of these kinds of parents, not just the neglectful iPad kid ones.

[lulu2992]

💚❇️ Bonne Année ❇️💚

[strawberryrhubarbs]

if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times; any weird old man who comments on my face mask at my job should have to pay me $25

[pynkhues]

It is interesting with Antoinette. I could see it being that Lestat genuinely had affection for her, even if he would certainly have killed her had Louis personally asked him to -- or it could be that she was just familiar, and he wanted the closest thing to intimacy he could get, so someone who knew him was better than someone who didn't. And the whole possibility that she reminded him of Gabrielle in some ways...

(x)

Yeah, I totally agree, anon.

I actually unfortunately suspect that Antoinette isn't a character the show will really come back to, and I think I'm one of three people that cares about that, haha, but where I tend to land on her relationship with Lestat is the fact that neither Lestat nor Louis actually have any friends.

That's not to say that I think Lestat and Antoinette were just friends, I don't, they obviously fucked a lot (which like, also comes down to the fact that Lestat doesn't know how to have friends he doesn't fuck, haha), but I do think the reality is that Lestat and Louis have very different racial and cultural contexts, hobbies and areas of interest which aren't things they can easily share with each other, especially not in early-1900s America, and I think that's a bigger factor in their relationship breakdown than either will admit to.

It's why Louis' able to reconnect with Jonah so quickly - they might be leading different lives, but they have more overlapping factors than they don't, whereas he and Lestat have less than they do - and for Lestat as a white theatre kid, he needs to be around other performers. I think with Antoinette, she's obviously a talented vocalist and an ambitious artist, and I can see that genuinely just being company that Lestat wants to be close with. They probably talk shit about crap theatre they've seen and do vocal runs together and fuck, and honestly for a part of Lestat, that would lowkey be a dream relationship, haha. Do I think they have a deep emotional connection? No, but given even Louis' willing to admit she's talented, and his own complex relationship with not succeeding as an artist, I wonder how much that factors in to his portrayal of her and his insecurities around their relationship (to say nothing of the fact that she's both white and a woman).

This feels like it's going on a hundred tangents, haha, but my point is maybe they'd step out on each other less or descend into unforessen levels of chaos and destruction if they both had a few friends they could talk about their identities and niche interests with!!

[arolesbianism]

Everyday I look at my nuggets and go maybe I should let my gay men get bitches. And then I make more nugget yuri instead

[hauntingblue]

Episode 8 I am so scared....

[keeps-ache]

yay yippee yay :3 🎉

[please-picturemeintheweeds]

..

[soulsxng]

@arcxnumvitae and @fatestouch replied to your post:

WHAT?!

👀👀👀

"It is not an issue of having grown tired of my position, or anything of the sort...though it would likely be a lie if I were to say that I were not feeling somewhat drained."

There's a small hum, and Sivel finally lifts his gaze from the mage pools to regard Ranadi and Alsina, who had eventually begun with a steady (albeit nervous) stream of questions. Why he had brought this up. When he had begun to think about it seriously. Would it be temporary, or permanent? Who would replace him, and what he would be doing, instead?

...What had happened to make him want to abdicate in the first place?

"I love Vasyri...I do. And I love my people just as deeply. But over these past few years, I have come to wonder if, perhaps, I have done all that I am able to for them. Vasyri deserves someone with a fresh outlook on things. Someone who does not look at potential alliances and associations that could benefit us, or end up overly focused on how things might go wrong. Someone that does not feel compelled toward the need to do things on our own, even if we do have allies, so as not to potentially open ourselves up to further threats."

"I think about my home, and I think of what I need to do so as to not fail them again. How I do not think I could stand to see any of my people suffer as they did in the past. And no matter whether I realize that or not, I am never able to shake myself from being almost as overprotective of them as I am of all of you. Of my family..."

"That makes any growth or evolution difficult, if not outright impossible. I know that, and yet...I find that, more and more, I am unable to justify the risks necessary to see much worthwhile change take place. So...while I do not necessarily believe myself to be a poor leader, I feel as though things have grown to be stagnant."

"And all of that is without mentioning the ire that so many outside of Vasyri view me with. I worry that, as long as I am Luminary, the stigma attached to myself and my deeds will continue to weigh Vasyri as a whole down, as well."

He talks through everything in a soft, even tone. It's obvious to both Ranadi and Alsina that this is something he had put a good deal of thought into, since a year or two ago, when he had commented half-jokingly about it to the pair of them.

"Besides...I miss it. How things used to be, when we were younger. Being able to go wherever we fancied at a moment's notice. Exploring and experiencing things with our claim-- something that I have never had the opportunity to do with Ania or Cyrus even once. It feels like, by becoming Luminary, I somehow came to believe that I had to give up so much of myself that, even in my earlier years of ruling, I would never have imagined doing. As if I gave up a part of my culture, pieces of who I am, moments with my loved ones...I look at the person I have become on occasion, and oftentimes, I do not like what I see. What I turned myself into, simply because I thought it was for the best of everyone involved. Because I thought that people would be more impressed, or more intimidated."

"...I do not intend to leave Vasyri forever, nor is this something I intend to rush. I want to be sure that whoever I pass this title onto, they are going to be the right fit. I still want to be around here and there to offer my support and assistance, and to teach people where I can-- both the new Luminary, and whoever else may want to learn from me. And when I'm not doing that, I think I would like to start by going along with Ania, Cyrus, and Sivan on one of their expeditions. After that, maybe I will take them on a trip to some of the spots that mother and father used to bring us when we were younger, with Naya and Nesimah...perhaps Quella. Both of you as well, if it is something you would be open to? It would hardly be the same, otherwise."

"Going back to my abdication, however. As I said, it is not something I intend to rush. I...am coming closer and closer to the conclusion that it is simply my time to take a step back, is all."

[twinklingwatermellon]

sigh