#actually i need to just make a whole odyssey verse don't i

[diveyne]

dead last — it's almost strangely poetic, isn't it? culled first from the herd, and she has the slimmest of points to show for her time. they burn like a brand searing into her skin, like it is a mark tarnishing her name for the entire universe to see. with the cleanly awarded victories with little points awarded for each round she has since been in, the viewers upon earth and around the intergalactic seas would know the extent of her merits and wits, no? that she is capable, that she had everything it would have taken, if only the emperor weren't so flawed in his methods from the start. she would have won — morgana knows this, deep in the swelling depths of her raging soul.

no, she cannot sit still. there is a vessel burgeoning with anger bubbling high in her chest, with so much pressure that she's become a ticking time bomb, ready to explode at any given moment. the passengers upon the ship could hear it in the thunderous clatter of her heels beating against the floor, the howling winds of her dress snapping with each sharp turn down every corridor in search of the emperor. morgana had bullied a horde of guards until someone finally croaked and revealed the location of kayn's personal quarters. she doesn't bother with pleasantries or knocking, nor does she care for the consequences, especially now that his ridiculous little show was over.

morgana barges right in.

" you. you. now, you are going to listen to me, and you are going to listen well, " she starts, vicious in her furrowed brows and snarling lips and fingers that curl so tight that her nails dig into the bed of her palms. " aren't you the least bit curious about my answers for all the questions i could've answered? you owe it to me to listen. " oh, she is audacious, bold and brave, reckless to speak so carelessly and to take such a tone to the emperor of the universe, but morgana is past caring. he will hear her. " i could have been your champion, and i think you know it. "

a lil somethin' for @umbane, because, you know, we want our dinner.

[kagesdumpsterfire]

Dean deserved to know how smart he was. I don't think any one really spelled it out for him before he died just how smart he was, and that breaks my heart because:

Dean Winchester was hella smart!

People always thought Sam was the smart one, which was true in a sense, but not in a way that made him any smarter than Dean. And I hated it whenever a storyline/character (Including Sam and Cas) implied that Dean was stupid. It wasn't even a book smarts vs street smarts thing between the brothers, because he had book smarts too. He sometimes lacked in common sense and his emotional intelligence left much to be desired, but other than that? Dean was intelligent as hell.

Books

Dean read a lot. Like a lot. He didn't always talk about it unless the plot called for it, but Dean read a lot of books. Complicated, thought provoking books. When it came to research, he was less than willing sometimes, but that doesn't mean he couldn't. No one wants to do something they enjoy doing if someone/something else is making them do it.

Dean read stuff like Vonnegut. He read Tolstoy ( War and Peace is 1,225 pgs btw and is not a simple read. I've read it. It's rough) He read the Odyssey (12,110 verses). Bukowski! None of these works are something that can be comprehended by the simple mind. (Vonnegut comes closest being a junior high reading level but considering he was never consistently in school... and just because jr high students can read it doesn't mean they should)

Ingenuity

Dean NEVER got enough credit for how ingenious truly was.

My man built an EMF meter out of an old walkman

He made a sawed off in jr high

He used an electromagnet to wipe out the Ghost Facers footage of them

He used rusty nails, paper clips, a car antenna and other random close by objects to get out of handcuffs.

He survived an entire year in monster hell not only surviving, but getting to the point where he was chasing them through their own domain. That takes serious survival skills.

His entire profession is built on quick thinking and clever planning to survive. He went on plenty of hunts by himself and came out the otherside still breathing.

He rebuilt a whole ass car, a couple of times, from literal scraps.

He was damn good at coming up with alternate weaopns on the fly.

He got a majority of his income from hustling pool and poker ( which takes a clever mind) and credit card fraud.

He magnaged to create several false identities and evaded the litteral FBI way longer than he should have been able to

Someone who is stupid couldn't mangae to do half of the stuff Dean could manage easily

His education

Dean has a GED. While that's not a difficult thing to achieve it's still not something you can do willy nilly. It costs money and is like an 8 hour test. That means he had to study. Money was a precious resource to the Winchester's, especially in the early years. They needed money for food, shelter, gas and other supplies and it wasn't always easy to come by. I can guarantee Dean wouldn't have wasted money on getting his GED if he wasn't confident he pass it.

Sam's smart. Sure. That's what he's known for. But who do you think helped him get that way? John definitely wasn't sitting at various kitchenette tables and helping Sam with his homework. John most likely wasn't the one teaching Sam how to read and write. How to do simple math. John was too busy going on his crusade for vengeance to worry about his children's education. It's evident that John didn't veiw higher education as a necessity for his boys and actually blew up at Sam for trying to pursue one. So yeah, Sam is smart and he deserves credit for making his own education a priority, but it was most likely Dean who gave him the stepping stones to do so, and if you think Dean didn't retain any of that knowledge when he was helping Sam, sorry but you're wrong.

What he lacks in a school education he makes up for it with hunting knowledge and lore. He knows A LOT off the top of his head about monsters and lore. He became a better hunter than John could ever hope to be because he was well studied in it.

His endless encyclopedia of what I like to call HF³ ( Hyper-fixation fun facts)

Dean is a giant nerd. He may not know a lot of, what most would consider, "important" facts, but when it comes to things that interest him, the man is a fountain of knowledge.

Cowboys. He knows them by face and name. He knows their history, backstory, what kind of weapons they used and how they died. Name a famous cowboy, Dean knows.

Cars. Dean knows makes, models, years, how to take them apart and how to put them back together.

Guns. Same as cars

Scooby-Doo and other TV shows. He knows characters, episodes by first glance and can give you the plotlines and BTS information.

Movies. How the man found time to watch all the movies he quote/mentions in the show's run, I'll never know, but he has watched everything from action, to horror, to Disney and can give you the same info he can for TV shows he likes.

Music. Dean LOVES music. He has extensive knowledge of classic rock. He knows band members by name, albums by year, background information about the albums and artists and knows every Zeppelin song by heart.

The most important fact about his nerd knowledge? He didn't grow up in the age of information. He didn't grow up in a time when he could just google questions he wanted the answer to. That means he had to read magazines, articles, books, watch documentaries listen/ watch interviews.....He had to research everything he knew the good old fashioned way. That takes effort, dedication, and intelligence.

Stupid people can't lie and Dean is a damn good Liar.

Okay, stupid people can lie, but they can't lie well. Lies, especially long/big ones take a lot of brain power. Because lying requires manipulation.

You have to be able to know people and how their minds work in order to get them to believe you. That requires a basic knowledge of human psychology.

Big lies require creativity. You have to be able to create a back story, counter arguments, what if scenarios and explanations for inconsistencies if you are to be believed.

Long lies rquire an extensive memory. You have to be able to remember which lies you told to who, everything about that lie and be able to spinnkle in facets of the truth to keep it believable.

While being a good liar isn't his most attractive/positive character trait Dean possess, it's not something that a stupid person could accomplish as well as he can.

Dean is incredibly witty.

He's goofy and funny at times, which is often written off as being dopey, but it's not.

He is known for his quick one liners. Not so much the "Get hit by a bus" "...You're a...bus" type ones but more so the "Is anything about you real" "My boobs" type ones.

His form of comedy comes from a place of knowledge. Is he goofy and immature at times? Yes. But that doesn't make him stupid.

TL/DR:

Just because he was goofy and didn't have the education Sam did, doesn't mean he was stupid. He was incredibly intelligent and I wish he would've known that before he died.

[wondersofeos]

Please, don't take virtual photographers for granted.

I noticed that, of all art forms present in fan communities, virtual photography was probably the most left out and less respected despite it being prevalent (at least in the communities I engage in). I've read comments arguing that it didn't count as fan content because anyone could do it, and anyone had the tools to at least become a photographer. I even read that photography was lesser than any other type of content, because it was just about snapping away that random scene and calling it a day. And you know what? It's not true.

If anyone could do it, then, the title of "photographer" wouldn't exist in the first place. And provided that you have the tools, pushing the snap button is not enough to make you a photographer. Not anyone who can cook is a chief, just like not everyone who can hold a pencil can draw. Photography is not just about clicking that button. Photography is about aesthetic perception. Photography is capturing a feeling within a feeling to make it say something without words. It's about finding the right scene, the right settings, the right subject, the right lighting, the right angle, the right timing. It's about time, and composition. It's about communicating what you cannot through what you see and how it makes you feel in a way that aesthetically makes sense. And contrary to what many think, not everyone can snap the same photo, you know why? Because not everyone has the same perception and things to say. Not everyone wants to go about saying it the same way. A change in scale of the very same settings can make tremendous differences in the way the whole photograph is perceived and can change its meaning drastically.

Photography is not easy. Have you heard about composition rules, such as the infamous rule of thirds? The rule of odds? About leading lines? About framing? About depth of field? Have you read about how symmetry affects your framing, about color combinations, about managing space, about the golden ratio? Those are little things, little tips and techniques that seem insignificant when you check them out, but they actually build a world of perception that's yours to project through something which already exists in a way that only belongs to you because there’s only one perception like yours.

Virtual photography isn't different. And it's not less hard. Because we have limited tools that we need to master in order to capture as faithfully as possible the aesthetic that we have in mind. In FFXV, the Nvidia Ansel tool drives me nuts sometimes I'm telling you. It gets your laptop to heat up hotter than Ifrit's fire, it crashes for no reasons, when it works it does not always cooperate well ... with those weird filters and blurs that you have to adapt to. And it more often than not takes me a full hour to have at least three viable photos amongst an ocean of thousand regular, inadequate ones. In AC Odyssey, I swear the limitations in settings on PS4 are incapacitating sometimes, and it's hard to get close to the intention you're going for no matter how hard you try and play around with the settings you're given. Same with Horizon Zero Dawn. It takes countless hours of patience, of failing and persevering, and of editing too sometimes... to get to a result that you consider to be remotely right but not yet quite what you were going for. Many times for little consideration and little respect in return.

I can understand that you would not see the appeal of photography, and precisely, of virtual photography. And it's more than okay. I mean, there are countless ways to be creative, and we aren't sensitive to each and every single one of them. But I cannot understand that you would disrespect our medium and diminish our content while we're partly creating it for you to enjoy further the universes that you love. Because you aren't able to conceptualize the time, studies, skills and efforts it takes to take photographs, does not mean it's illegitimate and does not make it worthless. Respect us not as creative imposters, but as content creators. Because that's what we are.

Below the cut are some of my best artistic photos aside from FFXV, and I don’t even think they are “good” as I’m a total amateur and loads of things feel off to me. But it took me countless tries and hours to get them. I tried my best and applied bits of what I learned so I could capture something that felt special to me through settings that fitted my aesthetic perception. I don’t think it makes me special. But I believe that the struggle that was part of the process which led to this photographs makes me a legitimate content creator and not some imposter among creators. And it’s the same for each and every single virtual photographer out there no matter what verse they capture photos of and whether they are fellow amateurs or total pros.