crystalcaravan1

[crystalcaravan1]

Wuk Lamat but she's tabasqueña! / 01-25

[crystalcaravan1]

[crystalcaravan1]

[crystalcaravan1]

when i first heard about the male loneliness epidemic i was like oh yeah close camaraderie and bonding between men is often discouraged in favor of competition or, if not discouraged, at least filtered through a lens of individualism that precludes deep connections. and then i learned what people meant by it (men arent getting laid) to which i say skill issue

[crystalcaravan1]

the thing about caring about ableism and fighting for disability rights, is that you can't center it about just your disabilities. i'm not d/Deaf. i still care whether an event has sign interpreters. i don't have photosensitive epilepsy. i still think that strobing lights are 99% of the time totally unnecessary and serve as a needless barrier to photosensitive people. i can transfer to a toilet mostly independently. i still think that public accessible bathrooms should have lifts and adult changing tables in them. you can't stop your disability activism where it stops benefitting you. that's not activism. that's selfishness

[crystalcaravan1]

maybe i like my tech a little bit inconvenient

[crystalcaravan1]

I feel like chatgpt came around and everyone immediately forgot what they were doing to get stuff done before. like writing centers, extensions, extra help, templates, office hours, beta readers, random generators, and art and writing prompts have all existed for ages. even if you were cheating there's always been sparknotes, photomath, copying, paying someone else to do it, faking that your grandma died, and whatever. all of that stuff is more reliable and doesn't fuck over the planet. and you might actually learn something

[crystalcaravan1]

people talk about the weirdness of seeing school friends get married and have kids but its even crazier when its online friends. like bro i've seen your carrd kin list. we went to homestuck together. brothers in chronically online arms. what do you MEAN youre pregnant.

[crystalcaravan1]

phones love to go "do you want to clear up .3 GB by deleting these cherished pictures that you havent looked at in more than 30 days?" while also installing random apps and AI bullshit you didnt ask for. and you cant even uninstall half the apps

[crystalcaravan1]

Apparently a lot of people get dialogue punctuation wrong despite having an otherwise solid grasp of grammar, possibly because they’re used to writing essays rather than prose. I don’t wanna be the asshole who complains about writing errors and then doesn’t offer to help, so here are the basics summarized as simply as I could manage on my phone (“dialogue tag” just refers to phrases like “he said,” “she whispered,” “they asked”):

“For most dialogue, use a comma after the sentence and don’t capitalize the next word after the quotation mark,” she said.

“But what if you’re using a question mark rather than a period?” they asked.

“When using a dialogue tag, you never capitalize the word after the quotation mark unless it’s a proper noun!” she snapped.

“When breaking up a single sentence with a dialogue tag,” she said, “use commas.”

“This is a single sentence,” she said. “Now, this is a second stand-alone sentence, so there’s no comma after ‘she said.’”

“There’s no dialogue tag after this sentence, so end it with a period rather than a comma.” She frowned, suddenly concerned that the entire post was as unasked for as it was sanctimonious.

[crystalcaravan1]

A good rule of thumb for AI is "would you trust a trained pigeon to do this?"

"We trained a pigeon to recognise cancerous cell clusters and somehow they're really good at it" okay great, that's something that could plausibly be a thing.

"We trained a pigeon to recognise good CV:s and left it in charge of sorting through all our job applications" uh perhaps consider not doing that.

[crystalcaravan1]

completely incomprehensible email from my mom. sent from my it's

[crystalcaravan1]

bang bang!

i was watching a YT vid on old timey train travel and the whole time i was thinking of an AU of a wild west train heist LOL... featuring yuyang and dante as bandits, and qq (belongs to @m-s-ka) as well as koana as passengers - although i think it'd be cool of koana was like. some kind of inspector or sheriff type, chasing after the "bad guys"... but oops will he fall into yuyang's arms romantically? we'll see...

[crystalcaravan1]

The fundamental difference between Zenos and The Warrior of Light as Written--something that exists regardless of any particular WoL's disposition or motivations, all things subject to personal headcanon--is that the TWoLaW engages deeply with the world around them, and Zenos does not. The fundamental quality of Azem the Traveler, and the quality that is suggested to have been inherited by TWoLaW (and by Ardbert), is that they are deeply engaged with the world, and with its people.

Is it true that TWoLaW is disposed toward violence, sure, absolutely, for reasons of video game mechanics if nothing else. But I fundamentally disagree that violence is the core of TWoLaW regardless of how we roleplay them. At the core of TWoLaW is their engagement with the world. Yes, as a result of that, TWoLaW is willing to go kill people and things because they were asked to. You know what else they're willing to do because someone asked them to? Talk to people. Fetch things for them. Gather resources. Make things. Deliver gifts. Facilitate trade. Learn skills. Build community. Cross the seas to help a new friend. Explore. Uncover ancient mysteries. GO TO SPACE! And if you see Zenos as a foil for the player rather than the character, all this still very much applies.

You can roleplay the most curmudgeonly, antisocial, misanthropic WoL possible, you can even reject all side content and stick solely to MSQ, and you will still find yourself inhabiting a character who, as written, is fundamentally engaged with the world. They don't have to be happy. They don't have to be nice. They don't have to do any of what they're doing out of altruism. They're still making the choice to connect with other people, to invest themselves in the struggles and passions of others, to have a personal stake in shaping the world around them, because that is what the character is written to do.

Zenos's tragic flaw is his inability--and yes, perhaps, on some level, unwillingness--to connect with the world and the people around him. He finds no meaningful engagement with the world except to enact violence upon it. He has no personal investment in the Garlean Empire except as it allows him to enact violence, and by this disengagement he basically singlehandedly allows the entire empire to collapse because he doesn't care about it, only about fulfilling his own desires. The funny thing about Zenos as a foil for the protagonist is that he would make a terrible RPG protagonist. The archetypal RPG protagonist is so defined by their willingness to say yes to menial tasks that are only meaningful to some minor NPC that most modern RPGs end up lampshading that fact in some way, and it's endlessly memed upon. I struggle to imagine Zenos making it through the Company of Heroes fetch quests in ARR without getting bored and stabbing someone.

So all-encompassing is this worldview for him that even upon calling the WoL his only friend, he can find no meaningful engagement with them beyond "let us enact violence upon one another." Even the one person in the world he finds interesting enough to engage with, he is seemingly incapable of understanding on any other level. (And if you play a WoL with a desire to connect with Zenos on any other level, I think there's potential for a really interesting tragedy there! Because he either won't or can't.)

And we don't ever really get to challenge him on how narrow and stifling and miserable his engagement with the world truly is. Maybe there's a flicker of it at the very end, an acknowledgement that his life was fundamentally unfulfilling. Perhaps Zenos even sees, on some level, what the WoL has that he does not; maybe unconsciously in pursuing them, he seeks to figure out what that thing is. But then he dies, in his chosen manner, after getting the same one thing he's been pursuing as long as we've known him. That's what's sad about Zenos on a narrative level. Not that he dies, but that he dies unchanged and unchallenged.

And this is why I just can never quite get behind the idea that the core of the WoL is the same as the core of Zenos--no matter how many people the Warrior of Light has killed. I just don't believe that. When I look at TWoLaW, I see a character deeply engaged with the world. When I look at Zenos I see a character who never truly connects with anyone or anything outside himself.

[crystalcaravan1]

I just had to do it! Brant from Wuthering Waves. I have him almost S6 right now thanks to a lot of coral saving and really lucky pulls. He's now my main. Ahhhh, I adore this bisexual pirate.

Streamed on my PICARTO channel! Come watch on Saturdays if you're interested in more. <3

[crystalcaravan1]

[crystalcaravan1]

FFXIV band AU

I've had this idea since 2020 and it's still eating at me enough to perhaps write/draw a comic for this eventually, but for now pictures will have to do!

Haurchefant had the idea to form a band during their college years and of course Aymeric is too nice to deny him (even though he raises valid concerns) and Estinien has always quietly tagged along for the road. Aymeric made the excuse that his instrument knowledge is not befitting of the band (violin and piano) and so he offered to help with writing the songs. Who would believe that their grudge pop-punk band will do well! Haurchefant was the perfect showman, Estinien had his brooding but powerful enticing aura, Aymeric's songs were metaphorical and deep but fun and sing-a-long-y. They also often reminded too much of a certain white-haired bassist and their experience together through Aymeric's lenses, much to Estinien's obliviousness.

Haurchefant acted like a celebrity even with minimal audience and dragged Hilda into the band early on when he didn't manage to bag her but they still had a great chemistry (and she lit a fire with her drumming). The 3 of them made it big and eventually the 4 of them, as Aymeric joined for press once (tackling band management and PR on top of his other paperwork and song writing) and the fans couldn't take their eyes off of him, demanding him to play with the band. Politely denying, Aymeric still got a piano solo inbetween their powersongs here and there.

Not being straightforward with Estinien ate at his heart more often than not, when the band went to a party but Aymeric had to stay behind and deal with paperwork (estinien giving him a long quiet look before leaving with the other two), only for them to be back late into the night, Haurchefant and Hilda drunk and loud, Estinien sober but post-fuck with a stranger.

The band broke up when Haurchefant got into a scandal with few groupies and had to raise a child now, Hilda wanting to continue the band life but in an all-female band, leaving Estinien and Aymeric to themselves again, in almost an unreal silence post this ride of a life. Aymeric eventually confesses to Estinien, only for Estinien to tell Aymeric that he was aware of his feelings all along, mentioning the songs were saying it all and Aymeric almost ashamed at his friend deciphering their meaning and correctly attaching it to himself. At long last, Estinien leans in for a kiss before he asks Aymeric to still manage his taxes though.