jumpsplat120

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unethical nonmonogamy, not because someone's cheating or whatever, but because everybody involved is really dedicated to psychosexually fucking up one member of the polycule

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if the sex isn’t a little silly then what’s the point

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you can always listen to an album start to end in order to remember how beautiful life & art is

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This may seem like an exaggeration, the idea that one can learn how to properly think like a criminal by learning how crime stories work. On a personal note, let me tell a story from the Leverage writer’s room.

Apollo Robbins (http://www.istealstuff.com/) runs a crew of professional thieves who consult for law enforcement. He was also our criminal consultant on Leverage. Every few weeks he would visit the writer’s room to advise on the scripts and keep us up to date about new cons and the latest in criminal technology.

One day during the third season he sat in with the writers while we broke a story. We posted the details of a real-life white collar criminal up on the room’s whiteboard, using him as the basis for our Mark. We looked at his weaknesses, how he moved his money, what his hobbies were. Once we were happy with that element of the story we added a Vault to the mix, one that used an interesting new alarm technology we’d researched. We then spent about an hour figuring out how to circumvent that alarm. We even sketched out a map of the imaginary building so we could keep track of our Crew’s movements during the Job.

“Well, I’m done here,” Apollo muttered. Noting our confusion, he pointed at the board and index cards cluttering the wall. “This is exactly how real Crews plan these things. This writer’s room is now a fully functioning criminal gang. You could be thieves.”

Of course writing television pays better than crime (usually), with far less chance of being arrested (usually), so we all managed to resist the temptation. But aside from the day a US Attorney asked us to change a plot because we’d created a scam that was a little too foolproof, or when a Homeland Security Agent admitted they were spooked by a security hole we’d exploited in our season finale, it was certainly one of the proudest moments I had on the show.

Source: "CrimeWorld" by John Rogers in Fate Worlds Volume Two: Worlds in Shadow. Evil Hat Productions, 2013: 20.

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revealing yourself as monstrous and inhuman and expecting me NOT to fall in love? ok….

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i hope luigi mangione is proven innocent & gets to sue a ton of companies for slander and win & i hope he gets enough money to rebuild his life and get any help for his chronic pain that he needs & i hope he’s able to disappear from the public eye entirely if that’s what he wants

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been getting really into bed recently

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Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

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someone on this website can make the mildest anti-work post like "i hate having a job i wish i could stay at home playing games" and the replies will inevitably be like "well if you want a TRUE COMMUNIST UTOPIA you'll need to PULL YOUR WEIGHT you cant be a USELESS LAYABOUT consuming EXPLOITATION you need to put aside your selfishness and ORGANISE with your COMMUNITY" and its like. okay i agree but have you never heard of 'wishes' and 'fantasies' before

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id die for the internet archive over my country

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I could write an essay on Warframe's use of forcing the player to walk slowly or limp as a way of creating a feeling of powerlessness and how masterfully it's used. And I could write an essay just on the segment where Stalker limps to his landing craft.

Stalker is extremely, almost comically powerful when he's in his element. The spy mission is laughably easy. He auto hacks every terminal. He can insta-kill every enemy. He can stay invisible basically the entire level and when he's invisible he doesn't trigger any alarms or tripwires. There's no challenge whatsoever. He's been doing this for centuries, to the point its become effortless.

This is juxtaposed with his complete and total powerlessness to help Jade. He doesn't know what to do or how to do it. He doesn't have any abilities or tools that help him with this. He can only watch her waste away.

Or, he can ask for help.

He can break the endless repetition and make a change. He can go to those he hates more than anything for help.

And, despite a thousand years of rage and pain, he does. Because, somewhere, deep down, in a part of himself he's long forgotten, the desire to protect is still what defines him, moreso than even the hate.

The second mission is slightly harder, as AOE damage circumvents his invisibility to a small extent, but is still pretty effortless. It's a change in why he's doing it, but not much change in what he's doing. He's still in his element and extremely powerful.

Then Sirius(or Orion) is born and Stalker's role, his goals, his whole existence, changes instantly. He's no longer the hunter, but rather the hunted. No longer a just a killer, but rather a Protector.

All of his abilities are disabled. All of his weapons besides the scythe are disabled.

The scythe that, in a written prelude, Hunhow praises for, unlike his other weapons, being a tool meant both for destroying and for growing. For creation and destruction.

A tool he uses as a shield. But, crucially, one that FAILS.

He CAN'T protect Sirius. He's defeated. He has to be spared. Someone else also has to choose to protect. To choose to go against the trait that has defined their life (greed/ambition in the case of Xeto) in order to protect something precious.

And they do.

Xeto gives up her chance to impress the Sisterhood and likely paints a huge target on her back, in order to help someone she doesn't know. She lets Stalker get to his feet and she and her men stand aside for him to escape.

And, in that moment, bloodied and beaten and dragging his broken form to his landing craft, we are given back control as the player over Stalker only to sell the effect of the powerlessness, physically, he has been reduced to.

And how, in that moment, as a person, he has more power than he has in a thousand years. Because he has chosen to break the endless spiral of grief he's been trapped in for a millennium and go against what he was crafted into to, once again, choose to love and protect instead.

Ballas tried to shape him into a tool of nothing but bloodshed because he hated how Sorren had defined himself with love in a way Ballas never could and, in that way, attained the love Ballas always saw himself as unfairly denied. He tried to destroy every bit of that love and every scrap of that man. But he couldn't. He could not destroy the child that Jade and Sorren created and he couldn't ever fully stamp out the love between them. And, even in the deepest depths of hatred and despair that Stalker fell into, the caring and loving man he was remained, never able to be destroyed.

Slowing those steps down and forcing the player to hold the command to keep going forward the entire time gets that feeling across in a way that is so poignant and part of what makes interactive media like video games such a powerful and unique medium.

He is reclaiming both his past and his future. Reclaiming the parts of himself defined by love. He is rejecting that easy path of wallowing in misery that he's chosen for so long and instead dragging himself forward, one limping, painful step at a time, towards something that actually matters to him.

And trusting the universe to stand aside to let him.

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i need to soapbox about DID more, because its kinda like being trans, you'd think that you'd notice if you had it but that's just cultural osmosis giving a skewed impression, statistically you probably wouldn't. statistically you need to do rigorous work to notice.

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very sexy image but she shouldn't use a drum magazine in these conditions or her firearm will malfunction. can you draw her with her pits out next

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I struggle so hard to tell the difference between romantic and platonic relationships because I wholeheartedly believe that anything you can do in a romantic relationship you can also do in a platonic one.

There is no real difference to me definition-wise, there is simply just what boundaries you may have with certain people compared to others.

This has got me in some trouble a few times.