#DO NOT VOTE 3

[sophies-junkyard]

I’m in the South. I’ve got ears to the ground. Republicans are SWEATING at the prospect of Kamala being nominated. They’re not sure Trump can beat her.

Let’s prove them right.

[hellenhighwater]

I was doing research on the ArtPrize thing, because research is how I handle very nearly any issue, and I'm trying to set my expectations reasonably, given that it's one of the largest and most lucrative art competitions in North America. And I was reading up on the voting process, because some of the prizes are awarded based on popular vote. The first vote by an individual has to be placed on a smartphone in the geographic region of Grand Rapids, MI, but subsequent votes (one a day per entry) can be from anywhere, so long as the phone started in GR. There's $600,000 in awards and grants this year, so voting matters in determining who gets not-insignificant amounts of money.

You know how many votes were cast last year? 30,000. Thirty thousand. Across every category, not just for the winning art piece. That is not actually that many votes. I have more than that number of you right here, my poor captive audience.

Now, if I can just figure out how to get all of you into Grand Rapids during the month of September, I'd have this in the bag. It wouldn't have to be for long. Just a brief convention of fellow tunglr users, for just a moment, just a quiiiick....dash...c

[annabelle--cane]

was going to make a joke about how jon in theory is a leftist and objectively believes in "power to the people" and all that but fundamentally he simply finds people at large to be dumb and annoying and every time someone disagrees with his opinion in a way that ticks him off he briefly becomes 100% supportive of complete authoritarianism, ideally with himself as the dictator of the known universe, and then I remembered that wouldn't actually be a joke because he did canonically do exactly that.

[cometrose]

trump may be a lying felon and biden a foot away from death but my fellow americans don’t forget to vote for your senators and representatives they’re important!!!

[imjestergirl]

POV: you are about to have the best night of your life or the last night of your life

Minthara won the poll! So here she is trying to kill you🥰

I have so much fun drawing her 🖤

[yangjeongin]

SKZ as DND CLASSES: WARLOCK FELIX

warlocks are seekers of the knowledge that lies hidden in the fabric of the multiverse. through pacts made with mysterious beings of supernatural power, warlocks unlock magical effects both subtle and spectacular.

[thatfaerieprincess]

WATCHED C3e99 DOWNFALL PART 1 AND UHHH I HAVENT DRAWN FAN ART IN YEARS BUT THE MUSE REALLY SPOKE TO ME THIS TIME

Step 2 figure out how the Emissary actually looks

[paarthursass]

forget pitting bg3 characters against dragon age characters

[naivety]

So long as the political and economic system remains intact, voter enfranchisement, though perhaps resisted by overt white supremacists, is still welcomed so long as nothing about the overall political arrangement fundamentally changes. The facade of political equality can occur under violent occupation, but liberation cannot be found in the occupier’s ballot box. In the context of settler colonialism voting is the “civic duty” of maintaining our own oppression. It is intrinsically bound to a strategy of extinguishing our cultural identities and autonomy.

[...]

Since we cannot expect those selected to rule in this system to make decisions that benefit our lands and peoples, we have to do it ourselves. Direct action, or the unmediated expression of individual or collective desire, has always been the most effective means by which we change the conditions of our communities. What do we get out of voting that we cannot directly provide for ourselves and our people? What ways can we organize and make decisions that are in harmony with our diverse lifeways? What ways can the immense amount of material resources and energy focused on persuading people to vote be redirected into services and support that we actually need? What ways can we direct our energy, individually and collectively, into efforts that have immediate impact in our lives and the lives of those around us? This is not only a moral but a practical position and so we embrace our contradictions. We’re not rallying for a perfect prescription for “decolonization” or a multitude of Indigenous Nationalisms, but for a great undoing of the settler colonial project that comprises the United States of America so that we may restore healthy and just relations with Mother Earth and all her beings. Our tendency is towards autonomous anti-colonial struggles that intervene and attack the critical infrastructure that the U.S. and its institutions rest on. Interestingly enough, these are the areas of our homelands under greatest threat by resource colonialism. This is where the system is most prone to rupture, it’s the fragility of colonial power. Our enemies are only as powerful as the infrastructure that sustains them. The brutal result of forced assimilation is that we know our enemies better than they know themselves. What strategies and actions can we devise to make it impossible for this system to govern on stolen land? We aren’t advocating for a state-based solution, redwashed European politic, or some other colonial fantasy of “utopia.” In our rejection of the abstraction of settler colonialism, we don’t aim to seize colonial state power but to abolish it. We seek nothing but total liberation.

Voting Is Not Harm Reduction - An Indigenous Perspective

[moonymauk]

hi @hotvintagepoll I've made a letterboxd list with all the actors from this tournament if anyone would like an easy enough way to see all the guys and the movies they've been in <3

[vera-keyes]

People who only vote for characters they recognize I rebuke thee

[hotvintagepoll]

[CHILD ABUSE TW]

hey, i know this is a poll about appearances only, but still, should a guy who raped a 10-year-old be here? (that's what lex barker did to lana turner's daughter)

This is a fair question. Here’s the thing: in running this bracket, I got 130+ submissions. Many, many of these men have dirt on them—some of it verifiable, some of it questionable, some of it rumor. (The propaganda for Robert Wagner alone swings both ways). When I started the poll I wondered if I should make a policy excluding certain people, but I just felt that would become dicey way too quickly—partly because I don’t think it’s fair for my opinions to shape the bracket, but also because it would be impossible for me to do a thorough and just background check on every guy submitted. I know, it’s easy to say but it’s so clear in this case!, but for every seemingly clear-cut case like that there is another one that stems from the Hollywood rumor mill, unclear sources, and just plain bad blood that seems equally obvious to someone else. I can’t be the arbiter of morality for this poll, and I don’t think it’s right that I should make myself one.

so with that said: yes, there are some real scumbags in this bracket, but I leave it up to the individual voter to do their research if they’d like, and then decide for themselves if what they find matters to their vote. People may put what they find in the replies or reblogs for other voters to see, but I won’t be boosting posts like that because I won’t reblog anything negative I’m not 100% sure of, and I don’t have time to verify every item.

I know this won’t make everyone happy, but I think the best option is to assume that you guys are rational and smart, and can weigh your own choices when it comes to the vote. Is it enough for someone to be hot? Do you need them to be good too? I leave that up to you.

[miscellaneousrenaissant]

Below are some compilations of Shuro/Toshiro (26), Laios' and Falin's dad (~30*), and Marcille's dad (~late 40s to late 50s**):

Please compare them to tall-man!Chilchuck:

(My rationale for Touden's and Donato's ages is under the cut, along with some miscellaneous info)

*In Chapter 42, Laios mentions he hasn't seen his parents in over a decade. From the Adventurer's Bible, Falin estimates her parents were about 30 years old a decade ago. Touden's appearances were in either flashbacks of Laios' and Falin's childhoods or from Laios' nightmare, which was relying on his memories. Touden's current appearance in his 40s has not been shown.

**Assuming Marcille didn't enroll in magic school until after her father died at age 82, the youngest he could have been when she was born was 47. He looks similar in memories from when Marcille was a baby and a small child, so late 40s to late 50s seems a safe estimate for his age as he appears in Chapters 79-81.

Miscellaneous Notes:

Chilchuck is canonically underweight.

Shuro's pics were from Chapters 33, 36, and 38 when he wasn't eating or resting properly.

Touden's pics were from Chapters 26 and 42 and the latest edition of the Adventurer's Bible. There is a change in art style between Ch 26 and Ch 42, but he is estimated 30yo in both appearances.

Donato's pics were from Chapters 79, 80, and 81. Technically most of the pics are of a Doppelganger, but it based its appearance on Marcille's memories, and it looks similar to Donato from the flashbacks to Marcille's early childhood.

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.