#affiliate know

[unpretty]

Discworld Bundle!

$18 for 38 Kobo ebooks!

EIGHTEEN DOLLARS

THIRTY-EIGHT EBOOKS

The deal goes until February 1st! Unfortunately I think it's US only, so you might not be able to redeem this deal if you're using a VPN? I haven't checked.

Here is my affiliate link, go nuts

[koshka-sova]

tom scott would absolutely fit in arknights by virtue of how detailed the worldbuilding is in this game. yes this is just about the "im at X" thing he does every video.

"im at an abandoned amusement park in chernobog-"

"im in sami"

"i am about to cross a road in nuova volsinii"

"i am in vyseheim-"

"i am still in sami"

"i am here with dr kaltsit-"

"im at rhine HQ"

"im in front of a shop in county hillock"

"i am here at the ursus-higashi border-"

(loud voice bc windy) "IM AT THE FIELD OF FORGOTTEN WATER"

(whispering) "i am inside the mansfield state prison"

(shouting) "I AM ABOUT TO ENTER A KAWALERIELKI MAJOR ARENA"

"im at the entrance to gran faro-"

"im on a train to kjerag-"

(in kazdel, somehow) "i am here with dr kaltsit again-"

"i am in the golden city in sargon!"

"im at the iron carrot mining platform-"

"i am in laterano-"

"im at the obsidian festival"

"i am in front of the lgd headquarters"

(talking abt zeruertza) "im on top of a city"

"i am at mount hymnoi"

"im in calaisblason-"

"i am back from sami."

"i am in dossoles!"

"im in one of the naval battalions heading towards the sea"

due to how on-the-nose arknights is about real life inspirations, the tom scott of terra would be a feline. BUT it would also be funny if it was a team rainbow situation

[apocalyptic-byler]

hmmmmmmm thinking many thoughts about this scene

also thinking many thoughts about this particular photo

anyway mike wheeler watch your back 👍🏾

[emotional-engine]

In case you missed - GREAT Neopets News!

I didn't see anybody talking about the news here, so I thought that I could share a summary.

The Neopets Team announced today that they're under new management. They're no longer affiliated with Jumpstart (which announced their closure back in June) or their parent company NetDragon.

In their blog post in the official Neopets Medium page, they confirm that they are now an independent company:

(Dominc Law, worked for NetDragon and was an old school Neopets player. He put together a team to work on saving the brand.)

Also in that blog post the team talks about how they are well aware of the problems the site has been through in the last decade, they acknowledge the lack of resources which resulted in the Neopets website being left broken.

Going ahead, they are going to focus on community requests, such as speeding up the process of Flash Games conversion, clearing up the page conversion backlog, bug fixes, mobile compatibility issues and improving customer support.

Most importantly, in my opinion, they clear up that they WILL NOT go forward with any Metaverse bullshit, and will instead work on creating a game that feels like Neopets:

At this point, they have secured $4M in funding from various (unnamed) investors with additional funding from the management buyout. For the first time in forever, it looks like TNT has the resources they need to move the brand forward. In the blog post, they mention they have already hired developers and artists to work on the fixes the site needs.

From what it looks like, the game will be a mobile social life-simulation, parallel to the current website. We don’t have to worry that neopets.com will be replaced by a mobile app.

As of now, they have announced:

A brand new plot, scheduled for early 2024

A 2 million(!) NeoCash giveaway

More transparency with monthly updates from the team, scheduled AMAs

Neopets will be under the control of a new, unified entity: World of Neopia, Inc - the website will remain the same (neopets.com)

A Brand Ambassador Program

No longer going forward with NFT/Metaverse stuff

At the end, they published a FAQ with some answers that I found to be good and very interesting:

You can read the entire blog post here.

Or watch the YouTube announcement (which is way shorter):

[passionatememes]

for the sake of the mitzvah of being whole

was inspired by a very cool project published by Svara--a book of rituals & blessings for trans lives! it's a very very cool project

series of 14 screenprints on two types of paper! details below

[spielzeugkaiser]

[MASTERPOST]

This could have used more work, but I'm giving up. Witcher!Jaskier trained to help Geralt, yes, but he ends up using his many skills only for showmanship and parcour.

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

I'm probably going to do a terrible job of articulating myself here but every time I think about the worldbuilding in Hatoful Boyfriend, I think about the implications of having the birds simply have adopted the structure and policies of human society and go insane.

It's clearly originally just for the ridiculousness of it all for the players, but AGH it explains so much regarding the extremely rampant classism/racism/speciesism and how apparently normalized it is. It also, to me, adds a bit of moral nuance to the Dove - Hawk Party conflict.

(Long post under the cut. I'm so sorry I just kept going.)

First off, I'm obsessed with the concept of the birds becoming sapient and simply... taking over a society that was not structured for them. It leads to difficulties in universe! Bird wings are not made for doing tasks that human hands can do naturally - there's a couple instances where the characters ask for Hiyoko's assistance or express envy since she can just do the task more easily than they can. The birds are outright disadvantaged in certain areas of life, and yet, the society is in such turmoil due to the newness of it all that there still aren't really any workarounds for stuff like this.

Not that there haven't been any suggested solutions, such as the Labor 9 series, put forward initially by the Dove Party. Yeah, you know, that one throwaway line about how the party that up until this point have been the "good guys" wanted to take still semi-conscious human brains and make robotic slaves out of them Cyberman-style? What the hell. And what gets me is that Shuu was able to find the initial proposal, which he really only made tweaks to, which means that the project was at least close to being finished on the conceptual/planning/design phase before somebody went "hey this is a little fucked up actually".

The Dove Party wants peaceful coexistence with the humans, while the Hawk Party wants to eliminate humanity entirely. But we don't really go into how these two lines of thought evolved. I believe I have a suggestion for at least one part of the puzzle though.

Of all the birds in Hatoful, who enjoys the most privileges and the highest status? Fantails, it would seem. A breed of pigeon that is popular as a pet, considered beautiful and sought after, and achieve high accolades in shows and competitions - for clarity's sake, fantails were valuable in human society, and this status appears to have transferred when birds became sapient and took over. Conversely, which birds are ranked lower and often blocked from entering certain higher class places? Rock doves, who, in human society, are given an unfairly bad reputation, and considered anything from unclean and dirty, to nuisances, to pests. Again, this status transferred over when the birds took over.

So, while we don't know too many of the birds who make up the agents of the Dove and Hawk Party, let's take a look at who we do know of.

Fantails (Yuuya, Dove Party) are considered valuable over other doves and pigeons for being specially bred for their striking tail feathers

Cockatiels (Leone, Dove Party) are some of the most popular and beloved companion birds, kept as pets and considered very friendly

Rock doves (Ryuuji, Hawk Party) are considered unclean pests who receive a bad reputation, and are generally not treated with respect or appreciation <;- notable thing to mention here is that Ryuuji actually does like humans - I think he was only Hawk affiliated for the grant money and research facilities, which... fair enough man.

Chukar partridges (Shuu/Isa, Hawk Party) are game birds, specifically bred and released to be killed and eaten, and considered a delicacy

...do you... see what's going on here?

(I haven't mentioned Tohri as he's a special case. Give me a minute and I'll get to him!)

The birds we see in the Dove Party are those birds that were already viewed in a more favourable light by humans, a favourability that transferred over to their new society. Of course they are more likely to advocate for coexistence! They have less to lose, overall. And the Labor 9 series, and how that could've ever been suggested in the first place, suddenly makes a lot of sense. For many of these birds, society the way it exists now benefits them. Some of these high ranking Dove Party folks may be less about actual peace and justice (like Yuuya or Leone) and more about maintaining the current order of things - humans coexisting under their control, while they get to maintain their status... which is itself a product of human invention.

The birds we see in the Hawk Party, by contrast, are looked down on or hunted. Historically, even before bird sapience, they did not have a harmonious relation with humans - and it's likely this status carried over to their new society also, with many of these birds being more likely to have been disenfranchised. Their goal of elimination is therefore reactionary towards perceived threat. After all, the people who suffer when things go wrong aren't the ones at the top - it's all the people who sit at the bottom of the social rung; the vulnerable members of society who do not enjoy the same advantages as others.

Of course, the Hawk Party has built itself up into such a powerful group that they may have lost touch with this starting foundation - the only thing that remains is likely that reactionary fear. After all, people caught up in the actual conflict - Nageki, Hitori, Ryouta, and Hiyoko - see this kind of horrible bloodshed firsthand (firstwing?) and just want it to stop.

Again, it's not usually the people in these political factions who are the ones caught up in their conflict. It's the individuals who lack power or influence.

But that's just the political groups themselves. On an individual level, it's kind of interesting to look at and theorize where along the spectrum our core cast falls based on their species/breed.

Ryouta (rock dove) is actually rather indifferent towards humanity as a whole - he just likes Hiyoko. However, his witnessing of the Heartful House tragedy led him to abhor violence and unnecessary loss of life, and I'd imagine his mother's later illness solidified this. Ryouta doesn't seem overly interested in political struggles or the broader implications of a lot of things - he's actually a rather self-oriented character when it comes down to it (this is not a judgment, nor a bad thing! I love my boy!). Ryouta just doesn't want to lose people, really. A conflict would mean more loss, and rock doves seem to have to struggle enough as is.

Hiyoko (human) is the daughter of two diplomats, but interestingly, we don't get to see much of her political views on things - perhaps because even if she expressed them, it wouldn't really matter - she's not herself a diplomat, and humans are the lowest of the low - her going to a fancy school doesn't really change that. Social-wise, except with her friends, she is tolerated, not accepted. Yet, it's safe to say that Hiyoko strongly disapproves of people who flaunt their status - she's quick to not take crap from Sakuya, to get angry on behalf of Ryouta and herself over the gull clerk's assholery, and also to defend Miru and Kaku as living beings worthy of respect. Interestingly though, she also uses Okosan's status as a fantail to get Ryouta to let go of him and let him do whatever he wants so... it's kind of unclear what her firm beliefs are. Perhaps, as a human, she still values fantails more highly. I don't know honestly. Implicit bias?

Sakuya, Yuuya and Okosan (fantail pigeons) may share the same breed, but their experiences are highly different. Sakuya is largely separate from the human-bird conflict, as he is unlikely to be directly affected by it. As such, a lot of his story and development has to do with actually learning and un-learning about the world outside of the limitations of his "father's" classist views, which he simply mimics without understanding the larger implications. Yuuya and Okosan, on the other hand, may be fantails, but are also looked down on and often treated as inferior - Yuuya for being a "half-breed" and for his reputation, and Okosan for being closer to feral than a lot of other doves. Interestingly, these two show more interest and respect for the individual than Sakuya does, who often makes sweeping generalizations based on status - which makes sense to a degree, as they've been on the receiving end of this kind of treatment, whereas Sakuya hasn't. Okosan believes that each person has their own "wonderful names" (read: identity outside of breed or status), while Yuuya is a genuine fighter for justice who is able to get to the heart of people, especially in Holiday Star. However, even though they have experienced classism, they still have certain privileges with regards to species/race - take Okosan's shock when Hiyoko and Ryouta are barred entry from his favourite store. None of them are quite as out of place in everyday society as some of the other birds here, and it's notable that "diverse" St. Pigeonations still apparently has a significant fantail student population.

Shuu (chukar partridge) is really interesting, as he doesn't particularly care for the politics of the Hawk Party, and yet his role as a killer/hunter of both his fellow birds and humans is an interesting reversal of the chukar being a game bird. Shuu also has a disability (his semi-paralyzed right side) which hinders him in bird society even more than most. His extreme, yet coldly logical solution to kill all humans to stop the fighting between them, could be as much his rationality, as his joy in the sadistic, as a reactionary survivalism (remember he was caught up in a human terrorist attack as a child - while overall he considered this beneficial to him, he also did lose much of his colour vision and the use of his right side, so it did leave him weakened). Shuu attains control by "flipping the script" as it were.

Tohri (golden pheasant) starts out in the Hawk Party, but much like his colleagues, doesn't seem to care much for their politics. Golden pheasants are game birds whose eggs can be eaten, but are more often bred and kept for their plumage - they're not prey, but they're not exactly pets either. All this puts Tohri in this interesting position of being somewhat in the middle of this conflict, and indeed he goes on to be a part of (found?) the Crow Party - an opportunistic group that seeks to benefit from the overall conflict. Golden pheasants are birds intended to be admired for their beauty and intelligence more than anything else, benefitting in some ways from humans without a strong connection or a reliance, and Tohri's opportunism fits nicely with that. (As an aside, our sole crow character, Albert, is also something of an opportunist, being an assassin on the fringes of society.)

Hitori and Kazuaki (button quails) are somewhat interesting. It would be both expected and understandable if Hitori held hatred for humanity after the Heartful House incident, or even before then, considering they were all war orphans. Instead, he doesn't seem to harbour any particular ill-will - he seems totally fine around Hiyoko, and her being a human has nothing to do with his reticence with letting Nageki hang out with her in the shrine universe. Kazuaki, too, doesn't seem to mind Hiyoko being human and isn't afraid of her any more than he is anyone else. While quails are game birds, with both meat and eggs being eaten, button quails are too tiny for that and are mostly kept as pets - they are considered cute, silly, and entertaining, though a bit too jumpy to be outright companion birds. The quails don't seem to experience too much in the way of speciesism (except arguably with the whole mistaken identity of Kazuaki's corpse... there may be a bit of an "all quails look the same" thing going on perhaps). At the very least, they are able to occupy teaching positions at a renowned school as respected intellectuals, and did go to university. Still, it's kind of a known thing that you don't put button quails with bigger, more dominant birds, since larger birds will often pick on them or even outright try to kill them simply because they're small and shy - this may, in hindsight, explain some of Kazuaki's demeanour.

Nageki (mourning dove) and Anghel (luzon bleeding heart dove) are the two who are uncommon bird species in Japan. Nageki is another war orphan, who would be forgiven for harbouring resentment for humanity, but instead is appalled at the violence and made a huge sacrifice to get it to stop. It's kind of unclear how Nageki fits into this society, as mourning doves are not prey or pets - they're wild birds. They live on the outside of the human world, and while Nageki exists within current bird society, he likely doesn't have a designated status within it. Nageki is unfortunately also alienated from much of the action due to his illness and later his untimely death - this is why a lot of Nageki's thoughts are somewhat from an observer's perspective, with his most emotional moments being derived from his rare direct experiences - specifically the Heartful House tragedy and the human killings he was forced into, which solidified a really firm stance of not wanting anyone to suffer like that. Anghel is another outsider, this time genuinely a foreigner, as opposed to Nageki. Again, Luzons are wild birds, not prey or pets, and so it's a bit unclear what his status is. This might explain why Hiyoko repeats Sakuya's remarks towards him without apparently realizing they're actually insults - Anghel is removed enough from the conflict she is familiar with that it seems she doesn't quite... get it. Again, Anghel's role is as this strange kind of omniscient observer, whose perspective is closer to the player's than to the rest of the cast. He definitely frowns on the Hawk Party's overall goal - the Demon Spores are evil to him, and his main objective is to stop them from spreading, as they would cause damage to both birds and humans. I attribute his morals to his mother having raised him right lol. The lack of a clear status for both of them may be why they appear to take the stance of judgment based on individual actions, but are not heavily involved in the conflict itself - while humans tend to like mourning doves and luzons, there isn't much interaction that goes on between them. Nageki and Anghel are simply less embroiled in bird society's human-derived status conflict, which makes them both outsiders and observers.

As a bonus note, Azami, Rabu and Kenzaburou are all species of birds that can be kept as pets (java sparrow, budgie, parakeet), which may account for some of their friendliness towards Hiyoko, and Kenzaburou's willingness to hire her. Kenzaburou is even a bit old-fashioned it seems - he sleeps in a cage, which implies his ancestors were probably pet birds themselves. It's likely he, in particular, has more positive views on humans.

...Please tell me I'm not the only one who spent ages thinking about the implications and workings of a fictional post-apocalyptic bird society. Also I hope this made sense I kind of went off the rails here.

[holypowell]

glen seen filming around sydney for his upcoming romcom (©)

[toonheartz]

so as you might know, mickey's entering the public domain on january 1st

what if we did something really silly to celebrate?

i know it's really short notice but we can continue to do it even after the date because well, he's gonna be public domain! so what if...we all made "mickeysonas" and posted them with the tag #mickeysona?

kinda like how people made spidersonas and linksonas and sorasonas but more absurd, something that makes people think...why though

a sona is basically a representation of yourself, so in this case you'd be drawing yourself as mickey! or...mickey as you? minnies are also welcome :]

ANOTHER silly idea i had was to coin a term, a "mickey mouse", meaning an iconic or flagship character. like mario is nintendo's mickey mouse and pikachu is pokemon's mickey mouse. what if we literally just. started calling our main oc our mickey mouse. so show off your story's mickey mouse with the tag #mymickeymouse! will it catch on? probably not. but it would be really funny.

if you want to do either or want to see others do it, consider spreading this around!!

[nevermoretoleave]

is he your lord before he's your brother? how do you put your duty to your lord before your duty to your brother? how do you tell the difference? — on rahadin, of house zarovich.

@\iasoup-deactivated20190921 / you're on your own, kid, taylor swift / rest achilles, the world will wait, p.d. ( @\lostcap ) / norwegian wood, haruki murakami / so, you're a soldier, m.j. pearl ( @\fairytalesques ) / glass and god, anne carson / infinite jest, david foster wallace / curse of strahd / mirror traps, hera lindsay bird / the cruel prince, holly black / he ain't heavy, he's my brother, the hollies / brother, sister, rival, friend: the longstanding effects of sibling relationships, joshua a. krisch / matryoshka, mabel episode 28 / this is how you lose the time war, amal el-mohtar / antigone, sophocles / sue zhao / underworld, mabel episode 16

[moongothic]

You know I am gonna go on a limb and say that Dragon isn't a bad father who "abandoned his child"

Like we didn't need confirmation that Dragon is an ex-marine to come to this conclusion, but it does add to the fact that Dragon would've known that if he ever fathered a child, that child would be in grave danger simply for being Dragon's child. Dragon would've known he couldn't have stayed with his child

The Government went out of its way to hunt for the Pirate King's literal unborn child, hurting countless people, innocent pregnant women, their husbands and babies in the process. Because Roger's blood was "evil" and so was the child for carrying that same "evil blood"

And mere years after the hunt for Roger's child, the Government would put a gigantic bounty on an 8 year old child because she could read forbidden texts. And we know the Ohara Incident became the final straw that transformed the Freedom Fighters into the Revolutionary Army.

Dragon was the head of that Army. Even without being an ex-marine, he would have known that the government would treat his child (and partner) the exact same as Ace and Robin. But knowing he was an ex-marine, it might have even given him extra insight into just how fucking bad the Government was

The Army would have been no place to raise a child in general

And being raised in the Army would've robbed the child from ever having any freedom, the ability to choose from themselves who or what they wanted to become and make their own path

If Dragon ever wanted Luffy to be free, he could not have kept the child with him. The child had to be left somewhere safe, away from him. And if Dragon knew Ace had been entrusted to Garp, then he would've been 100% certain Garp would be willing to take care of his son (as Garp was clearly bending the laws for Roger's kid, like surely he'd then do the same for his own grandkid)

Dragon was in a shit situation and in the end, I do genuinely believe he did the best thing he could to give his child a future by not endangering him with his own existence

[unpretty]

i don't usually post affiliate links to kindle books but right now

nona the ninth is five bucks

the duchess war is a dollar

and i thought you might want to know

[neonnoir-ao3]

Okay so I absolutely adore both high fantasy levels of storytelling as well as extremely mundane AUs. But when it comes to making my own AUs? I’m the ultimate slut for hilariously mundane slice-of-life stuff. (I literally made a domestic/family AU for what is considered one of the scariest analog horror series to date)

So as soon as I saw the words “carnival AU” in a post from @sm-baby about their carnival AU (I am begging you to check it out, it’s absolutely phenomenal), I had the stupidest fucking thought: a shitty little Showtime carnival AU

No, literally. A literal carnival.

Like a traveling circus with a midway of games and shit. County fair style rides that are literal death traps. The whole nine yards.

Pomni is a disgruntled wage slave (nothing new) who starts her new second (perhaps even third?) job: a temporary one at a local carnival. It’s like a month long event at most, but extra cash is extra cash.

Alongside her, Gangle and Zooble are also temporary workers for the event. Jax, Ragatha, and Kinger are circus members— Ragatha is one of those human pincushions in the sense that she has an insanely high pain tolerance (she also does sword swallowing). Kinger is a magician, and Jax does acrobatics or something idk. Caine, as always, is the ringmaster.

So Pomni & crew are working the carnival games and stuff while the circus does their performances, but they all share a break area so they know each other and shoot the shit, but she never sees the ringmaster. The circus members allude to him being… off. Ragatha says he’s just eccentric, but Jax basically paints them a picture of a genuinely unhinged man. Pomni is now extremely afraid of the guy that’s in charge of her paycheck.

She manages to get her check as an auto-deposit, but a few weeks in the system is down for their bank and she has to actually find Caine to get paid. She pussies out and is like “I’ll just hope the system is working by Monday, I can eat ramen and tap water for two days”.

It’s been a shit day overall— it’s pouring rain and there’s been like no customers, so she’s ready to get the hell home. She gets to her car, only to find her keys locked inside.

She’s cold, she’s wet, and she’s stuck out there. She’s trying extremely hard not to cry about it. She pulls out her phone, and googles lock-picking videos.

After like 25 minutes she gives up, just crying on the ground next to her car in the rain. She’s having the mentally ill equivalent of a Feel The Rain On Your Skin moment when suddenly the rain stops. She looks up to see a guy with an umbrella. She’s never seen him around before. He takes her into the backstage area of the circus show and gets her warm and dry. She learns that this guy is indeed the infamous Caine she’s heard about and tries not to panic.

*yadda-yadda-yadda slowly falling in love/aspects I haven’t fleshed out yet*

They’re interested in one another and want to stay together but the show leaves for the next town at the end of the week so they need to decide if one of them has to leave their current life or that they just can’t be together.

[quickhacked]

Of course Aubrey had heard of the Council before. I mean– who hadn’t? They didn’t necessarily rule the streets, or Night City’s underworld for that matter, but they sure as hell loved to rub their asses all over it at any given opportunity and never in his years of being a fixer himself had he felt the need to associate himself with any of them. He understood why it was necessary, sure– the agreements they made and the city-wide gang activity they monitored and reported to one another were a vital part of ensuring business stability as well as their own survival– but he knew the biz well enough to not trust the feigned kindness and so-called sense of community they supposedly aimed for. Everyone always had their own agenda. None of it was simply out of the kindness of their hearts, to ensure the safety of the innocent citizens of Night City– it would be naive of him to think so and by then he knew better than to let wishful thinking cloud his judgment.

taglist (opt in/out): @shellibisshe, @florbelles, @ncytiri, @hibernationsuit, @stars-of-the-heart, @vvanessaives, @katsigian, @radioactiveshitstorm, @estevnys, @adelaidedrubman, @celticwoman, @rindemption, @carlosoliveiraa, @noirapocalypto, @dickytwister, @dameaylin, @killerspinal, @euryalex, @ri-a-rose

[ducktracy]

"posting this because i NEEEEEED this on my blog" is probably going to be the caption for 95% of the Shin-chan stuff i post BUT IT IS NO LESS TRUE BECAUSE OF IT. Masaaki Yuasa is quickly becoming one of my favorite animators and i want to have easy access to ogle at his work at any time. and i hope for you to do the same! so here's his animation for Ending 3 of the show from 1993

[autistic-katara]

look i don’t have any problems with that canon m/f ship its just that that is a homosexual who should really be dating their same gender bestie(s) and the other mf (who’s in some kinda limbo world between gay and bi) is REALLY needed as a 3rd in their friends’ het-passing bi4bi polycule and the comphet going on here may destroy us all