#airswimming

[nodogsairswimming]

Judith

A very cool reference that Dora makes to a popular, though not technically canon, biblical story.

"Everybody knows the story by now. Holofernes, commander of the conquering Assyrian armies, has the Israelites on the ropes. Frustrated by the ineffectuality of her countrymen, Judith takes matters into her own hands, using her beauty and intelligence to ingratiate herself into Holofernes’ camp. After a night of drunken revelry, during which Holofernes’ behaviour is often read as being sexually aggressive, Judith beheads the Assyrian soldier while he sleeps. Without their leader, the conquering forces are wayward, and the Israelites prevail."

Judith Beheading Holofornes. Caravaggio 1598.

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes (1610 version) 

The themes the many many depictions of this scene usually revolve around are Sex, Desire, Violence, and how much women do or don't wield these things in their own agency. Is it shocking that Judith would do something so masculine as kill someone? Is it empowering? Is it kind of hot? Is violence something that women do as naturally as men? Is she doing it passionately? Angrily? Professionally? Is she doing it like housework? Or like something terrifying?

[perksofbeingalittletwat]

21st Lancers Officer Full Dress Uniform

[garanlin]

Reading +『AIRSWIMMING - エアスイミング』舞台写真 （撮影：米田麻理子）

2023.9.26-27 ＠アトリエ第Q藝術

[ultmtdoglvr]

READ STORY BELOW V V V V V I thought seeing this was the best thing in the World and THEN He told me... You missed the front View.................. She was "air swimming", acting like she was swimming as I was carrying her♡♡♡ #airpaddling #airswimming #catahoulaleoparddog #daddysgirl #daddyslove #daddydaughtertime (at St. Andrews State Park) https://www.instagram.com/p/CDke0yKF_Dh/?igshid=ao3nrlf0g2d4

[sexhaver]

do u think elden ring speed runs are so fast bc the game is still so new meaning more bugs? (Idk if those runs rely on exploits cuz I’m not trying to spoil myself) or is it like less linear than other fromsoft games or smth ?? like I’ve been watching soulsborne speed runs since i got ER and they’re crazy fast to me but less than an hour seems relatively rare for those. 7 minutes seems so EXTREME lmao

so the thing about speedrunning soulsborne games is that they generally all work the same under the hood, with a few minor differences here and there between the games that allow for more specific tricks. this is why techniques like using the Cat Ring/Hush spell/Silvercat Talisman/etc and quitting out right as you hit the ground to survive lethal falls, wrong warps, and triggering the death plane camera without actually dying to run through unloaded areas are common in all 3 dark souls games, along with bloodborne, sekiro, and demon's souls. the first week or so of speedrunning a new game will usually fall back on these tried and tested techniques to get some obvious sequence breaks before some game-specific trick is discovered that blows the unrestricted any% category wide open.

for Sekiro, this technique was airswimming. for Dark Souls 2, it was parrywalking. for Dark Souls 3, it was the teardrop glitch. all of these glitches require you to perform an extremely precise set of actions at a very specific spot, but reward you with the ability to clip out of bounds and basically just walk (or swim) directly to the final boss. the Elden Ring equivalent to this is called "zips", which let you teleport forward a truly absurd amount of distance, like, literally halfway across the game map in one frame at one point. however, while the first three glitches i mentioned require a fair amount of setup and have to be done in specific places, zips don't and don't, respectively. you perform a zip by holding Block while moving forwards for a very specific amount of frames, and some interaction between the block animation and the walk animation zips you to God knows where. the timing is really difficult to get down, and it feels inconsistent because you need a steady 60fps in a game that gets random lag spikes for fun, but you can do this literally anywhere. this has opened up routing immensely.

before runners figured out how to do zips consistently, the WR route hovered around 30ish minutes and actually involved fighting some enemies. the current sub-7-minute route completely skips most of the game, including getting access to your horse, using zips and a few wrong warps. the route goes like this:

as soon as you leave the starting building, instead of dying to the tutorial boss, zip yourself into the very end of Stormveil Castle and then walk out the back door into Liurnia. side note: if youre playing casually and haven't beaten Godrick yet, the speedrun is now already ahead of you about 30 seconds in

zip from there to the Raya Lucaria bonfire (the pvp hotspot one), then zip from there to the Four Belfries

pick up an Imbued Stonesword Key and use it to open a portal to Crumbling Farum Azula, an extreme endgame area. this teleports you to a platform way the fuck off to the side, giving you a preview of the area like 60 hours before you actually get there

lol just kidding, fast travel and alt+f4 at the right time to perform a wrong warp and respawn at the normal starting spot for CFA

using zips, get from the starting area to [SPOILER]'s boss room. bear in mind that your character has never leveled up (or even sat at a site of grace) and is still using the starting equipment

lol just kidding kill him by zipping out of the arena twice so he falls to his death when the floor unloads under him (have to do this twice because he has two phases)

this teleports you to [SPOILER]. walk 2 feet from your spawn point and perform a zip to skip directly to the final final boss fight, skipping about 10 minutes of running and 2 bosses in the process

perform one final "mega zip" to yeet yourself literally to the farthest possible corner of the world map. if you do it right you'll get pulled back into the fight with the boss you skipped over

but the final final boss is already registered as dead, so you just need to stall for like 5 seconds before the GOD SLAIN message pops up. the route used to do this by quitting out at a specific time but now just deliberately dies to a piledriver from the boss because it's way funnier and doesn't actually lose any time

you spawn in directly in front of [SPOILER]. walk forward 2 feet, press Interact, and stop the timer

[thedurvin]

Been having weirdly normal dreams lately, no surrealism or airswimming composite sea-beasts at all. A few nights ago it was literally just a rivals-to-lovers romantic comedy about two women (Alia Shawkat and a young Meg Ryan) involved in a contest to get the most celebrity autographs. I wasn’t there at all.

[kkssenya]

#portraitofadog #airswimming

[corruptedbunny-multimuse]

*i giggle maniacally*

don know how to airswim do ahhhh? heheh

He growled and tried to swim through the air towards her.

[enbyindex]

Okay I think I’m gonna learn Iconoclasts any% no airswim.  There’s a video guide for it that so far seems really good.

[awwflycat]

Corgi pup airswimming

[nodogsairswimming]

A ballroom at the Dorchester Hotel in London

[garanlin]

Reading +『AIRSWIMMING - エアスイミング』 2023年 9月26日・27日　アトリエ第Q藝術 - 公演終了いたしました -

ご観劇くださった皆様、お心寄せてくださった皆様、本当にありがとうございました

＞ 舞台写真が届きました

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[enbyindex]

We'll see how I'm feeling about it after finishing a 100% challenge mode run, but I think I might want to speedrun iconoclasts.

Just not sure if I'd want to do any% or any% no airswim. I'd probably want to do no airswim first since it's closer to the experience of just playing the game normally, but it's also much longer a run

[nodogsairswimming]

Madness and Witchcraft

This is some ramblings I wrote about what I see as the connection between Madness (writ large, as a social idea not necessarily as psychological conditions) and Witches.

Madness, like witchcraft, is an ascribed association. Identifying yourself as mad proves your sanity, like Catch-22. Only someone else can deem you mad, but once they have, there is nothing you can say that can remove that appellation. There IS no survivable test for witchcraft. There IS no freedom in madness. The moment that the term is given to you you have already been judged and executed, it just may take longer or different forms. The eye turns inward to constantly be looking for illness, madness, taint and to excise it to the best of your ability to survive the judgment of others. It’s a lot like the closet in practice. But it’s a closet you have been placed into against your will.

It is a personal characteristic that is a Societal Problem. Witchcraft and Madness are evils that have to be rooted out of the Community. An individual might be able to be saved, and wouldn't it be lovely if they were, but that is a secondary concern to the removal of the cancer in the larger community. Even if you do legitimately need help the asylum is not there to assist You, it is there to return a usable member of society with the strangeness or danger extracted from it by any means necessary. This is why the amnesia from electroshock or lobotomy is acceptable.

Everything becomes evidence of the term once it's given to you. Your hair, whether or not you float in water, how quiet or loud you are, your legitimate reactions to the way people treat you once you are assigned the role of Witch or Madwoman is just further evidence that the role is correct. How do you prove yourself sane? How do you prove yourself not a Witch?

Witchcraft is also a heavily gendered word with associations of women getting power from outside the natural or correct order of the world. They are usually independent, single, or if they do take sexual partners, they do it through magic and seduction. I think this is part of why Dora/ph clings to this idea so much. She's going back through her own life and trying to find the thing that convinced everyone that she had be thrown away. Was it the cigars? Was it the military fascination? Was it a sixth toe? Was it a Devil's Mark on her hair?

I think she is struggling with being called insane but not feeling insane. Or imbecilic, morally or otherwise, depending on her diagnosis. Her own perception of herself are at odds with the diagnosis of people who are supposed to know what they're talking about and at her lowest, maybe she thinks she is insane and just can't accept that. I think she looks for devil's marks and extra toes to try to find proof that she IS a witch, and therefore deserves the treatment she's got. If she can't find it, then she's stuck in this limbo of essentially being gaslit.

[hashtagwowrude]

You know Walking is just air swimming