#I really really miss that forest

[0rchidm4ntis]

Happy birthday Silver!! 💐

[zeldadiscussions]

The repeated use of the specific word imperialism in fandom discussions of TotK really bugs me because like… we know what imperialism looks like, right?

Genocide either by murder or assimilation, leadership that is either of the conquering race or loyal to it generally for personal gain, control of the conquered’s resources, and a social climate where the conquerors are considered superior.

But in this Hyrule none of the other races had their cultures erased, they aren’t governed by Hylian leaders and the local leaders’ first priority is taking care of their people, they manage their own trade affairs, and Hylians don’t constantly subject others to put downs about their race.

If a Hylian man dares enter Gerudo Town without the Chief’s permission, they kick him out or put him in jail. That’s how much control the Gerudo have over their own territory and how little being a Hylian matters if you mess with them.

Rauru is accused of hoarding power but he literally gave his secret stones out to the other races and they remain in possession of them to this day.

Basically the only time the other nations seem to actually follow Hyrule’s lead at all is when facing common threats or working towards common goals. Hyrule only ever meddles in other lands affairs either to lend them aid (Link and Zelda fighting for everyone, the folks at Tabantha Bridge Stable providing disaster releif to the Rito, etc.) or requesting aid from them (Rauru and Zelda asking the Sages and Champions to help them fight Ganon[dorf].) They lead like a team leader leads.

Sonia and Rauru didn’t found an empire.

They founded an alliance.

I know I’m beating a dead horse here but to my eyes at least (for now) there is zero solid evidence of Hyrule exerting control over the daily lives of non-Hylians or stealing their resources, two major defining traits of imperialistic rule. Hyrule is at the head of the alliance, yes, but an empire isn’t the only system of governance that has one group or individual at the helm of a coalition. The difference is in the details and the details here are that Hyrule leads the others but it does not dominate them, and that is key.

The only empire in the game would have been the one Ganondorf was trying to force on everyone and that was pretty bluntly depicted as being a bad thing. How can we say it’s pro-imperialistic if the main conflict is preventing the rise of an evil empire?

You can’t effectively analyze a narrative by completely ignoring everything about it and its meta that contradicts a knee-jerk viewpoint. What is even the point of analyzing it at all at that point?

[elodee]

HERMIT A DAY MAY - DAY 21

BDoubleO100 x Stand Still, Stay Silent

For Bdubs I chose the webcomic Stand Still, Stay Silent!

I chose this comic for BDubs because this comic takes place mostly in forested wilderness and has some of the most beautifully painted backgrounds I have ever seen in anything. I'm sure I don't need to explain why I wanted to represent BDubs with that.

I love the way this one turned out and I put a lot of effort into it, but it pales in comparison to how skillfully Minna Sundberg plays with light and shadow to make textured, atmospheric settings for her story.

While the comic is very beautiful, it is a post-apocalyptic story and does feature some disturbing imagery so discretion is advised.

To learn more about Stand Still, Stay Silent continue below the cut.

(Gamers Outreach, you know what to do!)

Stand Still, Stay Silent is a story which takes place in a post-apocalyptic version of Scandanavia. The comic heavily draws from Scandanavian mythology.

The story opens with the world succumbing to a strange pandemic. A century later, humans hide in reinforced settlements to protect them from the "silent world" - the wilderness outside their settlements, which is home to plague infected creatures.

The story follows a misfit group of humans as they explore this wilderness to gain a deeper understanding of their hazardous world. Also the art is absolutely gorgeous.

Style references:

Just your average stunning panel from this comic.

The wilderness in this story is as much a character as the characters themselves.

The title design

[arlenianchronicles]

Pov: You’re relaxing at the stream when you suddenly notice an Elf prince lounging in the shadows, gazing back at you ;)

Beren and Lúthion from my genderbend AU! It’s been a long while since I drew for this AU, but I got in the mood recently, so here it is! It was also an excuse to practice with sitting poses XDD I imagine this is when they’re still getting to know each other; Lúthion sometimes appears when Beren least expects it, and Beren usually lets him make the first move, since Lúthion still isn’t sure what to make of this adan!

I also wanted to give Lúthion more of a mysterious fae vibe, so I put him in the shadows. Meanwhile, Beren appears with the sun, which is a recurring (and favourite) theme of mine when drawing the Edain, it seems! :DDD

[myenterpriseisparked]

Okay I understand where people are coming from with the "emotional suppression in Vulcans is learned not genetic" talk re: "Charades" but, consider......... the emotional suppression is muscle memory, and the aliens took away the mental muscles that remembered how to do it. It's a crude metaphor on my part, but that was the way I saw it.

Also consider: it's a sci fi show using extremely high-concept bullcrap science on a weekly basis and maybe nitpicking it is a fruitless endeavor because none of it is going to make sense otherwise and enjoying the ride for what it is is a much more enjoyable way to engage with this franchise. Sometimes you need to shrug and let dumb things happen and laugh.

[palmtreepalmtree]

Mixed bag at the Court today, but at least we have 8 justices who are not out of their fucking minds.

Judge Ho on the Fifth wanted to toy with the safety of domestic violence victims to enshrine due process protections for gun owners -- if you haven't been convicted in a criminal proceeding, then you can't lose your precious 2A gun-toting rights because of a protective order in a civil proceeding. Fucking please.

That concurrence flew in the face of extensive evidence showing how criminal law fails to protect victims of domestic violence. Threatening activity is often a precursor to violence, evidence of imminent violence, but may still fall short of convictable offense let alone an offense that busy DAs have time to prosecute. Judge Ho's concurrence was willfully ignorant about this at best.

As it is, it's rare for individuals who are subject to a protective order to actually have their guns removed. The facts in Rahimi were so bad, it's shocking this was the test case -- but I think that's exactly the fucking point. It takes a lot for this issue to actually come up in a criminal proceeding, let alone be enforced pre-emptively. There are few protections in place for people who are threatened by intimate partner violence -- at least the Supreme Court agreed we should continue to try to gesture at those protections no matter how short they fall.

[compacflt]

If you want, and only if you want to, could you explain about making Logistics a big part of Ice's career path? Not only did fit so well with your Ice's characterization, it was just so neat I've made it my HC for Ice's career path.

yes!

I got REALLy deep into the defense policy weeds in this post so I’m putting a cut to save people’s dashboards

1. when i was rewriting chapters 8 &9 last winter i did literally the bare minimum of research about the current set of high-level officers. the commander of the pacific fleet at the time had previously been the director of pacific fleet logistics ordnance & supply. So that was easy to yoink. a proven chain of succession.

2. but also: it fit ice’s (or his alter ego admiral Kazansky’s) neat, orderly, effective, collected, strategic characterization. And as professional tactics go, there would be no better promotion for a high-level officer looking to take over the fleet than DFLOS. understand the fleet by the numbers, you comprehensively understand the fleet.

3. In terms of secret-keeping logistics, ice is supposed to be kind of the best. like, because of his logistical thinking, he & maverick get away with it. Or that’s how I would’ve written it if I were a little smarter. Obviously in practice a bunch of people find out so it’s not great. but the navy AS A WHOLE doesn’t find out.

4. The field of military logistics is rigorously bureaucratic, boring, soulsucking, selfdefeating, notoriously corrupt, and yet entirely necessary for the military to succeed at any level (in the very first draft of WWGATTAI i included a famous US marine corps maxim that most people have heard at some point: “amateurs talk tactics. professionals talk logistics.” but that was literally the only good thing about the original chapter 6 which got entirely rewritten a month after i published it). So logistics as a field of specialization fit in perfectly with my secondary character thesis that rising through the boring bureaucratic ranks of the Navy sucked all the humanity & will to live out of ice one day at a time.

a couple related interesting things that I’ve never talked about on this blog & might never get the chance to again:

a) ice canonically joins the navy as a fighter pilot & ends his career as a glorified bureaucrat. that sucks. obviously the struggle to rise in the ranks is a notoriously cutthroat, political, sleazy business (you do not get to the top of the United States Navy by being nice to people), but i would also not be the first person to say that—for exemplary officers—leadership is an EXPECTATION that can counterbalance someone’s natural drive to excel, if that makes sense. You get promoted because you’re good at something (flying), but you get promoted away from the thing you were good at. There is an extent to which you have to fight for a promotion—but there is also an extent to which commanders above you pick you for the job, suck you up along the pipeline. Loss of agency—a major major component of joining the military—does still apply to upper-level officers.

B) to that end, i am reminded of one quote from Todd Schmidt’s 2023 book “Silent Coup of the Guardians: US Military Elite Influence on National Security.” This is an Army training & doctrine commander speaking: “the military has a lot of two- and three-star senior leaders that were confident, charismatic commanders at the O-6 level. But that’s the end of the story. One in fifty, maybe one in a hundred, truly have what it takes to operate successfully at the strategic level and make a real difference for their service. The problem is that they all tend to think that, since they have stars on their shoulders, they’re the one.” —I’ve been writing ice as “The Chosen One,” the officer unicorn, for two reasons: one, it provides him cover for his illegal relationship (and also asks an interesting chicken-egg question: does he get away with his rlnship because he’s so good, or is he so good JUST to get away with his relationship?); and two, he’s “the chosen one” in canon, i.e. he already has four stars in canon: canonically he is not a mediocre officer. But most officers (cough cough maverick) are not cut out for high-level leadership.

C.) in Thomas E. Ricks’ book “The Generals,” Ricks argues that (at least in the Army) mediocrity in the general/flag officer ranks is unfortunately by design. In WWII, if you were a mediocre officer, you got relieved! You got fired! It’s part of why we won: merciless culling of the general officer ranks! But between WWII and Korea, officer relief began to be associated with shame & wasted resources. Mediocre officers got promoted anyways. The military elite pipeline sucks mediocrity up the chain of command. Ricks blames this issue for (at least the Army’s) shit leadership in every post-WWII war, including but most especially Iraq and Afghanistan. There’s no penalty for mediocrity. That in turn reflects on military strategy (mediocre strategists at the helm) & the outcome of every military foray (mediocre outcomes).

D) additionally. There’s a whole neverending debate in the field of civil-military relations (an extremely interesting field of study btw) about the corporatization of the military—lots of high-level talk over the years of “running the military like a business.” If you get kinda into defense policy like me (am i still antimilitary? Idk! but i CAN easily tell you i am against the navy’s littoral combat ship program! It sucks!) then you will know that the navy is struggling right now on a lot of different fronts (procurement [shipbuilding esp. is a disaster—ford-class carriers are under budget though 👍🏽], recruitment, theatre prioritization, general preparedness, readiness against major adversaries [China in particular]). Simply, the navy is pretty mediocre at the minute. I talk a big game about ice being COMPACFLT & SECNAV, but if those are true, & if he “exists” in our current timeline, or even canon timeline (COMPACFLT in 2020), then he’s complicit in a lot of why the navy is sucking ass right now. He didn’t do his job very well. LOL. So, because I love (especially my version of) ice too much to see his legacy suffer, I am stating for the record that my timeline is a different timeline where ice saves the navy from itself and fixes all its issues & solves all its problems & makes it the pride of the armed forces & the tip of the spear of American defense :) because I said so

E.) unrelated but important. It sounds obvious but it must be said. Ice dies on the job in TGM canon. To the extent that in earlier drafts of the script, not-his-sister-Sarah even points out to maverick that ice is still active duty, in the same breath as she tells him ice is sick again. (A wise move to remove that line.) ice does not resign his commission. Ice does not retire to spend time with his family at the end of his life. Ice dies as commander of the pacific fleet. He dies on the job; he dies FOR the job, bureaucratic as it is. If you were wondering why I wrote ice so dormantly suicidal, it’s because canon (i argue) has made it clear that—since the second ice signed up to be a fighter pilot during the Cold War to the second he died active duty—ice has ALWAYS been ready and willing to die for his honorable Navy career.

[lxlqzy]

good evening everybody

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

A Dark and Drowning Tide

gothic fantasy romance

a folklorist is chosen as the co-leader of an expedition to find a fabled magical spring for the king, along with 6 nobles

when her mentor, the other leader, is found dead on their boat in the middle of the night, she has to figure out who did it; while continuing the mission through the wilderness and navigating the potential political fallout

and the only one she can probably trust is her academic rival, a naturalist, who she hates

dark folktales & creatures

Jewish lesbian MC

arc from netgalley! out sep 17

putting both covers here because they’re both so beautiful!! (artists: Audrey Benjaminsen, & Erica Williams)

[stormofdefiance]

Lonesome Transcendence

[ryssabrin]

incredibly cold take but i really do not understand how bl*od/weave became the most popular origin/origin ship, both for each character or like. just in general. like they both make way more sense in a romance with wyll than with each other and more compelling cases could also def be made for gale/shadowheart (both having a crisis of faith and struggling to define their identity outside of said faith) and astarion/karlach (touch-averse vs touch-starved and jaded pessimism vs boundless optimism). hell i'd even see gale/lae'zel before i'd see gale with astarion. they simply do not like or respect each other. it's literally anders/fenris all over again tbh.

[blakistan]

You know it's kind of a shame that Asher seemingly deleted himself from the Vexnet after we fully constructed Vexcalibur, because imagine seeing interactions between Vexnet Asher and Infinite Forest Vance

[metrixnos]

forest painting practice :]

(mixed media: watercolor, posca pen, color pencil)

[ryderdire]

I don’t know as much as i should about warriors to make this post but . I really like the idea of an au where one of mapleshades kits survives and become firestars grandparent or smth because imagine her finding out about leafpool and seeing ashfur go to starclan would she protect her great grandkids would she even know. so many thoughts

[fragglez]

every time I watch a war related movie and they play the reveille i get spooked i HATE that melody

[daincrediblegg]

I love it when a movie is just about as good and perhaps even better than you remember it