#I'm finally getting around to doing this

[licorishh]

no way she's alive ?? yea those mental health breaks because social media makes people suck are wild huh

[starcurtain]

I know I've talked a lot about Alhaitham actually being one of the funniest characters in Genshin Impact, but every time I think about him, I find something new to laugh at.

Alhaitham's character stories and personal criticisms of Kaveh largely hinge on one specific point: That Kaveh's genius intellect and artistic abilities are incongruous with his idealism. Kaveh possesses more talent than a selfless person should reasonably have, leaving him vulnerable to constantly being taken advantage of.

However, Alhaitham states these complaints about Kaveh's personality while having the exact same problem himself.

Alhaitham is literally the definition of "personality and talents do not match." Sir, you are the pot calling the kettle black.

It's a given: Alhaitham is exceedingly competent. He is intelligent, rational, and capable of being impartial when needed. Despite being a slacker as the Akademiya's scribe, during his stint as the Acting Grand Sage, the game goes out of its way to note--in several places--that Alhaitham was actually going above and beyond what was expected of him, taking the position very seriously, uncovering and fixing major issues in the Akademiya, and demonstrating a deep care for the sanctity and future of the Akademiya as a whole when Sumeru's people's will to research and learn declined after the collapse of the Akasha.

By all accounts, Alhaitham is (was) a fantastic Grand Sage. Compared to Azar, who is shown as inherently self-aggrandizing and unconcerned with Sumeru's well-being, Alhaitham genuinely did his best during his brief time as Sumeru's leader, protecting students' research, concerning himself with how to address the people's problems, and even diving in to solve mysteries that normally would have been left for the matra. As Acting Grand Sage, we're told his behavior and judgments were fair, and he addressed problems immediately and with his full effort.

In short, there is literally no one else more qualified to be Grand Sage than Alhaitham.

And yet, despite possessing every talent needed to be the leader of a nation, Alhaitham doesn't have the personality for it. He has every single trait a good leader requires... And yet he refuses to be a leader. His own talent vastly exceeds the slow-paced life his personality leads him to seek, making his particular abilities more incongruous with his values than Kaveh's--by a mile. People keep trying to promote him into positions of leadership because his talents are so obvious, and yet he does everything in his power to deny his own abilities and instead fly under the radar--and under the level of his full potential too.

Awful hypocritical for you to claim Kaveh's talents don't match his personality when yours match even less, Alhaitham...

[mystery-pixels]

last block party of the summer

[trianglesand]

Marble hornets x Slendermansion AU but instead of Hoodie and Masky being proxies they also live in a small cabin in the same woods and are constantly trying to sabotage the creeps plans. Hoodie learns Jeff is supposed to kill some random family and follows him there to purposely set the home security system off and Masky jumps out of the closet and tackles Jeff. They all run away to their own homes afterwards when the cops are called. The Operator/Slenderman could put a stop to it if he so pleased, but finds the shenanigans amusing.

[tomaturtles]

Got inspired by this and had to

[pleaseinsertwittyurl]

There are always 2 sides.

The discourse around Louis and Lestat being a victim and abuser and nothing more drives me insane.

Something i don't think enough people remember is that the very same reason the fight began in 1×05 (lestat grabbing claudia by the throat when she tries to "take louis away") we see Louis himself do to her in 1×07 when she tries to get Louis to burn Lestat.

They BOTH would harm her rather than live in a world without the other. They are both guilty of abusing her and each other.

There is an implication that a good deal of time passed between Louis and Lestat meeting and the church. Louis expresses that he shares himself with Lestat in a way he only had with Paul. I would assume that goes both ways, to a degree. We know Louis knows at least enough about Nicki to discourage Claudia poking that wound. He also clearly knows that the threat of leaving is his most powerful weapon against Lestat.

Mental abuse is abuse. And Louis abused Lestat mentally for years. Shaming him, ridiculing him, shutting him out, manipulating him into making Claudia (a traumatic moment for him, whether Louis understands the depths of it or not) by promising to give him what he's being denying him, promising to never put him through what he fears the most.

Louis admits to purposely making Lestat suffer. He admits he was warned that Claudia would suffer and he wanted her anyway because he needed to feel redeemed. He is not innocent. He is not a trapped, weak victim. He made choices to hurt both Lestat and Claudia time and time again.

Does this justify Lestat's actions in 1×05? Obviously not. But we now know Louis was not willing to stop the fight. He taunted Lestat the same way he taunted the Alderman. He was unleashing years of frustrations just as Lestat was. His priority was not to protect Claudia, it was to hurt Lestat, consequences be damned.

I hate the drop scene as much as the next person and Lestat has admitted he will never earn forgiveness for what he did. But if you view Louis as some squeaky clean victim who was manipulated, trapped, and abused by Lestat you are missing so much of what this show is conveying.

We will always tend to paint ourselves as the hero of our own story. It is hard to accept your faults or that you hurt people you love. It is much easier to shift that blame on to someone else, to frame them as the villian. But life is not usually that black and white. Claudia had harsh words for them both in her diary, even before they got to Europe, for a reason. They both made hurtful mistakes with her, both treated her like a pawn in their relationship instead of a person, both harmed her, took away her choice, never prioritized her.

That is the great tragedy. That she never had a choice and was not allowed to be her own person. And in the end, they both are responsible for her misery and her death. That's what makes the reunion scene so important. They have been grieving her and carrying that guilt alone, all the while longing for the comfort of the other for 70+ years. Louis has found clarity in his memories, he has accepted his role in their suffering, he has seen Lestat's perspective more fully. Lestat is broken, totally consumed with that guilt and grief. Both know that although they cannot change what they've done, they can forgive the other, even if they can't forgive themselves. They can love each other despite everything they've done to one another because they cannot stop loving each other. But now they can try to rebuild that love from the rubble.

[egophiliac]

EGO EFO EGO OVERBLOT SSR ANNOUNCED OVERBLOTS SSR ANNOUNCED MALLEUS' HAS BEEN SHOWN BANGS POTS AND PANS EGOOOOOO

OH NO

[moongothic]

You know I'll be first to point out if/when Crocodile does a little Luffyism, so let's take a moment to appreciate it when Luffy does a little Crocodile-ism;

Like Luffy may be a silly lil goofball, but as he's said many times himself, he's always serious (in combat). And so Fujitora laughing at Luffy right in his face, when they're in battle and Luffy is completely dead serious... Yeah, the way he takes it like an insult gives Crocodile

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Errors, "Errors," and Sci Fi: The Nail Gun Gray Zone

I have more thoughts on errors in sci fi, specifically what does and does not count as an error. So I made a graph.

I'm a firm believer that at some point, your story will just be better if you bend certain rules of reality. A story with 100% realistic gun battles will be impossible for audiences to follow. One with ultra-realistic dialog will be boring and impossible to follow.

HOWEVER. Ice floats in water. Residents of now-Phoenix in the 1700s might've not known that, but it's hard to imagine anyone alive today who hasn't at minimum seen an image of a drink with ice in it. So GI Joe (2009) hinging a major plot point on a block of ice sinking in liquid water is widely regarded as silly and world-breaking. Same goes for The Strangers (2008) making a character unable to use her phone while it's plugged in and charging. Even in 2008, a solid majority of U.S. moviegoers owned cell phones and regularly used them as they were plugged in. Errors. Firmly.

But on the opposite end of the spectrum, you have "errors" that only bug a small subset of your audience with relevant expertise. You can always count on some of that subset to take to Reddit and whine pedantically about a 10-round gun firing 11 rounds, but I doubt those count as errors. My personal example is the lack of a character named Surprise in Inside Out — I've studied and taught Paul Ekman's theories, so to me the fact that they included only 5 of his 6 "universal" affects is always going to look weird. But I know that's less an error than a pet peeve, because there wouldn't be much for the character Surprise to do that isn't taken up by Fear or Joy. (The sequel also has a Surprise-ish and a Contempt-ish character, so there's that.) Same goes for the water main not being pressurized correctly in Batman Begins — I'll take city planners' word for it that Scarecrow's plan wouldn't work, but COME ON. It's a sci fi movie about a furry who makes a living punching aliens. If you want realism, watch a documentary.

That said. There's also that middle zone. What I call the Nail Gun Gray Zone, because it really is hard to tell how much some errors are obscure and piddly, how much they're mainstream and obvious. Because. Nail guns can't shoot nails. They're not projectile weapons. Not unless the story takes the time to show a character modifying the tool to override the fact that it has to be pressed flush against a board before it will fire. BUT. If you told me "99% of modern Americans know that!" I'd believe you. If you told me "only professional contractors know that!" I'd believe you. That poll clarified basically nothing — roughly 25% of respondents had used a nail gun, ~25% didn't know much about them, and ~50% had only seen one used. (I didn't ask "do you know that a nail gun can't be used as a projectile weapon" because then anyone who read the question should by definition answer "yes.")

Anyway, I think that a lot of online arguments about errors/"errors" in sci fi can be captured by the Nail Gun Gray Zone. Most of us can agree that only pedantic blowhards would say that the lack of Surprise ruins Inside Out, and most of us can agree that it'd be nice if The Strangers had simply broken Kristen's phone. Nail guns? One person's "oh come on, that looks ridiculous!" is another person's "it's called a nail gun, right? so why not use it like a gun?" and I don't think doing more polls will resolve it one way or another.

[odeqaard]

Victories give you confidence. My confidence are super high, but still, in some situations, I'm still struggling a bit. But, in that situation, with more confidence, I think I would have struggled less. So, let's see if we can continue working in that way.

[sunlight-shunlight]

pondering that falon'din is associated with an owl, and those are also messengers of andruil. and he's referred to as "winged death" which is also mentioned to be something that elgar'nan deploys against enemies. and both falon'din and andruil are referred to as venturing into dark places, where no one else can survive/wanted to go.

and ghilan'nain was not initially an evanuris, but was antagonistic towards them and making a bunch of weird creatures. she was given the offer to join them in return for getting rid of the creatures, and accepted. but with "pride stopping her hand" from destroying a few. and when asked about trusting people to share power, solas says "I know that mistake well enough to carve the angles of her face from memory."

solas also has nothing good at all to say about falon'din, mostly calling him a bloodthirsty tyrant who went so far in encroaching onto other evanuris territory that mythal had to besiege his temple and beat him up to stop him.

but he says nothing about dirthamen at all.

dirthamen is described as having gone missing unexpectedly, scaring all his followers, because they were now unprotected. and caught between their own high priest wanting to lock them into the temple forever like a cask of amontillado, and other forces outside that wanted to take their secrets by force. there is one note that a dirthamen follower defied the evanuris and took on a forbidden (probably a dragon) type of form, and was judged by elgar'nan harshly. he apparently also invented the varterral to protect his town from a high dragon? wack, but also could indicate that he had worked with ghilan'nain on making it, since she's the only one who's otherwise mentioned to be bioengineering stuff.

dirthamen has very very few surviving statues or depictions, and is more associated with falon'din than as his own independent figure in the dalish myths. even his own temple includes mosaics of falon'din. there's a few statues that are probably dirthamen, but the most striking is in mythal's section of the fade behind the eluvian, which is a statue of a hooded figure, doubled over with a giant sword sticking out of his back.

[machabre]

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

As we approach the next arc in the story, an outfit change is now on the horizon! The question is, what are our lads going to wear?

(Please also vote in the Lan Wangji poll!)

[das-a-kirby-blog]

surpriiiise an oc reference sheet for the little stinker

here's aevus! a teen responsible for keeping the timeline intact, overseeing multiple outcomes, and constantly having to interfere with some major events in order to stay on the preferred path.

[johnnyshrine]

★ 127 // “Chao”

[thecindercrow]

Roll20 - D&D Chaos 2 "They open the itinerary and go, 'But that means--!' And you hard cut to some doctor just getting stabbed a thousand times."