#and like. not in a real life sense

[bonnielunkas]

that crazy moment when you're in fazbear entertainment's new mobile game as a marketing scheme to ward off the rumors and all you can do is watch from animatronic hell as you're blatantly mischaracterized!!!

[colourmeastonished]

Body swap movie where one of them has invisible disabilities and when the other one lands in their body they immediately collapse catatonic on the floor from the pain and fatigue and the first one is like 'oh damn guess I don't have to worry that I'm faking it anymore'

[juniemunie]

[Abandoned by the Lightners, his heart became cracked with hatred.]

Hitting a lil' too close to home?

[fluentisonus]

(typing this as I walk to work so this is not articulate but) thinking a lot abt how les mis w javert sort of. hm. questions? problematizes? the Idea of dogs & the domestication of dogs (metaphorically ofc) like it sort of looks past the 'man's best friend' angle entirely & makes you think things like. kind of fucked up of humans [the social order] to domesticate the wolf [person outside of society for whatever reason] expressly to turn against & cause harm to other wolves in order to keep them out [away from respectable society] & keep themselves safe but never truly consider it an equal [it'll always just be a dog]. kind of fucked up that the dog finds enjoyment & life's purpose in this

[fruitydiaz]

at first i was like why didn’t they make the sex flashback with shannon clearly a flashback like the others in the episode and then i realized that it wasn’t a flashback eddie’s just actively rewriting his relationship with shannon while eating lunch with his girlfriend and plotting to cheat on her with the random woman he met at a boutique that slightly resembles his dead wife who did in fact ask him for a divorce before she died but eddie’s not gonna remember that detail rn is he

[inkskinned]

the rise of AI art isn't surprising to us. for our entire lives, the attitude towards our skills has always been - that's not a real thing. it has been consistently, repeatedly devalued.

people treat art - all forms of it - as if it could exist by accident, by rote. they don't understand how much art is in the world. someone designed your home. someone designed the sign inside of your local grocery store. when you quote a character or line from something in media, that's a line a real person wrote.

"i could do that." sure, but you didn't. there's this joke where a plumber comes over to a house and twists a single knob. charges the guy 10k. the guy, furious, asks how the hell the bill is so high. the plumber says - "turning the knob was a dollar. the knowledge is the rest of the money."

the trouble is that nobody believes artists have knowledge. that we actively study. that we work hard, beyond doing our scales and occasionally writing a poem. the trouble is that unless you are already framed in a museum or have a book on a shelf or some kind of product, you aren't really an artist. hell, because of where i post my work, i'll never be considered a poet.

the thing that makes you an artist is choice. the thing that makes all art is choice. AI art is the fetid belief that art is instead an equation. that it must answer a specific question. Even with machine learning, AI cannot make a choice the way we can - because the choices we make have always been personal, complicated. our skills cannot be confined to "prompt and execution." what we are "solving" isn't just a system of numbers - it is how we process our entire existence. it isn't just "2 and 2 is 4", it's staring hard at the numbers and making the four into an alligator. it's rearranging the letters to say ow and it is the ugly drawing we make in the margin.

at some point, you will be able to write something by feeding my work into a machine. it will be perfectly legible and even might sound like me. but a machine doesn't understand why i do these things. it can be taught preferences, habits, statistical probability. it doesn't know why certain vowels sound good to me. it doesn't know the private rules i keep. it doesn't know how to keep evolving.

"but i want something to exist that doesn't exist yet." great. i'm glad you feel creative. go ahead and pay a fucking artist for it.

this is all saying something we all already knew. the sad fucking truth: we have to die to remind you. only when we're gone do we suddenly finally fucking mean something to you. artists are not replicable. we each genuinely have a skill, talent, and process that makes us unique. and there's actual quiet power in everything we do.

[theminecraftbee]

hm. the final two being scott and cleo. at some point i need to like, properly write an analysis post about scott and cleo and the ways that they like... so the thing is that even since third life the two of them have always kind of fallen back and leaned on each other. widow's alliance to gaslight gatekeep girlboss to chosen soulmates to technically being on different teams from then on but were they really. to "we can't team up again we're too good" in secret life to "he's kind of like your bdubs" in that same series when cleo just sort of assumed they were on the same side anyway (by the way STILL an insane way to put that etho). to teaming up again this time to being the final two to laughing and having fun until the end until a zombie kills scott (like a zombie helped scott kill ren) until cleo doesn't have to be the one to make the final blow. to the "we always do this we always gravitate to each other".

the thing is that it's not so much that they're soulmates, exactly (it's kind of a defining thing about them that they aren't), or that they're one of those star-crossed pairs the life series keeps producing (they don't shape each other, not really). it's that they're both, in the end, always there. a stable pair, a lighthouse and a ship in a storm. the thing that makes them different from so many duos is that there isn't really conflict, not really; they know the shape of one another. their first alliance will often be someone else; their first alliance is also to each other, no matter what they say.

so of course they laughed as they fought in the end.

it was them. it was never really a fight in the first place.

[kkoct-ik]

i dont think i will ever forgive what the internet did to DID because please explain to me how "your sense of self is so torn apart you think youre multiple people" turned into "youre actually multiple people"

do you understand what i mean? please understand what i mean

[icewindandboringhorror]

I know this is just a silly bad quality random screencap of a screencap that I found on facebook lol, BUT it's a succinct enough image to easily describe the concept in a quick/accessible way hopefully :

-

(and of course, feel free to elaborate in tags, etc.! (especially elaborating about other senses as well.. can you "hear" in your mind just as well as you can "see"? taste? etc.) It's an interesting topic to me, as someone who's like a 4.5 at MOST lol. I'm curious what option will be the most common :0c )

[elbiotipo]

What's interesting is that yes, there has been plenty of media that has shown superheroes taking political positions. In the United States. What's going on the rest of the world is a backdrop, never mentioned much, you can pretend it's not there.

What if it was inescapable, though? What if Soyuz, the New Soviet Man, suddenly sank an US aircraft carrier bombing the Middle East? Isn't he fighting evil too? Or a Cuban superhero joins the revolution and spreads it over Latin America, and no, no vague villain stuff here, he isn't a random narco or bank robber criminal you know, he read his stuff, he is commited to creating the Patria Grande Socialista. Ah, you thought you were the only ones with superpowers, you fucking yanqui hijos de mil puta?

[littlenim]

how did the writers of DE make it so addicting to try and get Kim to like... smile near-imperceptibly at you in the flickering light of a cigarette glow. genuinely about to write a google docs page of word salad on this and how the way it's so irrelevant and almost certainly fruitless makes it so tantalizing

[asweetprologue]

i know probably nobody following me is even relatively in this fandom but I just finished s5 of the dragon prince and I gotta tell you. the canonical lovechild of the gay-coded villains was not something I saw coming

[caeslxys]

Something I think is extremely interesting thematically when it comes to connecting what Downfall and the ideas it tackled to the overarching narrative of campaign three is that the things Downfall made a point to showcase of Aeor—Cassida, Hallis, the visual of an aeormaton proposing to her partner, the specific and intentional decision to shed light on a far from insignificant amount of the population being civilians or refugees—is that it plays in perfect parallel across from what is happening (and, really, has been happening) to the ruidusborn on Exandria in present.

Bear with me for a moment. Aeor is ultimately a city that was collectively punished for the decisions of its leadership. We could (and, judging by the amount of discourse around this particular topic already, probably will) argue about what the Gods’ motivation for all of this was—whether it be that they could not, in the end, bear to kill their siblings or that they were terrified at the prospect of mortality—for me it is a very healthy dose of both—but for this I am much more interested in the latter. They were scared. That, really, is the driving force behind both this arc and their role in c3 as a whole.

Why I point this out is: It is far more interesting to me, especially as we go back to Bells Hells this week, to dissect the Gods and their decisions not purely on sympathetic motivation alone but as beings in the highest seat of power in the highest social class in Exandria.

So, having established that the Gods (in relation to mortals) are more a higher social class than anything we could compare to our real life understanding of divinity and that Aeor was eviscerated largely because of their fear—what is the difference between those innocents in Aeor caught in the trappings of their autocratic government leadership and a divine war on the ground, and those of the ruidusborn being manipulated both by Ludinus and by the very thing that inspired such visceral fear in the Gods to start with. I would argue very little.

I think of Cassida, doing what she genuinely thought was right and good and would save people, her son, and the object of her worship—and how that did not matter enough to any of them to spare her because of the fear they held at the very concept of mortality. I think of Liliana and Imogen, one of which we know begged for the gods to help her or send her a sign for years on years, and how every single one of their largest struggles could have been avoided had the gods loved them, their supposed children, as much as they feared what they could be. I think of how the thing that did save Imogen, in the end, was a woman who herself existed in direct defiance of the gods will. I think of that young boy, sixteen years old, that Laudna exalted on Ruidus.

I think it’s completely fair to judge Aeor’s overall society as deeply corrupt—it was!—but its leadership and police force are not a reflection of every one of its citizens. Similarly, it is fair to judge the Ruby Vanguard as corrupt—it is!—but its multiple heads of leadership and even the god-eater further are not a reflection of every one of its members.

Notably, and what I think the Hells will latch onto, this did not matter to the Gods. It did not matter that Cassida was trying to help. She was still too much of a risk. Will it matter, what Imogen does? Will it matter, if that young boy is in the blast radius when they decide to take no further chances?

I’ve seen a lot of people say that the Hells will side with the gods and I don’t think I agree. Especially as Imogen has been scolded and villainized over and over for daring to try and save her mother—who herself has been seen by some as an irredeemable evil in spite of her drive being the exact same—her family—but when it’s the Gods it’s justified? When it’s the Gods, it’s sympathetic? Too sympathetic to criticize further than “they’re family”?

I obviously do not think the Gods should die or be eaten or what have you, and I certainly don’t agree with Ludinus (though I find him much more compelling than just a variation of hubris wizard), but when talking about the Gods in Aeor and in present it isn’t really at all about their motivation or their family. It can’t be. Too many people, including our active protagonists, lives have been effected for it to be as cut and dry as “they’re family”. These are your children. They are your family, too.

[annabelle--cane]

a lot of my first thoughts about martin's characterization back when I first listened were about how he experienced the process of transition into adulthood in a weird out of joint manner, and I want to try and bring that back into the way I think about him. if he dropped out of school at 17 to become his family's breadwinner, then it stands to reason that he'd probably been filling a lot of the "head of household" roles since his early teens, but always in service to and under the direction of a parent that hated him. assuming that he got his institute job within, say, a year of dropping out, and he had to move to london on his own, being able to do all that as a teenager and not just implode (especially with no emotional support) is a significant feat, but it was all based on lies. all of his coworkers would have thought he was 4-6 years older than he was, and he could manage it, but only by making them think he was an incompetent young adult instead of an actually very capable teen. he went straight from being a kid with no time for being a kid to being an adult who was never taught how to be an adult. I think that does something to a person's ability to evaluate their own skills and importance.

[x-gon-give-it]

Headcanon, theory, prediction, whatever you want to call it,

but I think the reason that the universe Miquel hijacked collapsed, and not Miles, despite them both being “anomalies” is because Miquel was trying to change someone else’s story, as opposed to Miles who inspires other people to change their own stories.

Like, Miquel tried to force himself into a universe that wasn’t his. He took the place of his counterpart and pretended to be him, he was playing a part that wasn’t meant for him, he was changing a story that wasn’t his. And the universe rejected that.

Whereas Miles inspires people to change their own stories. His universe didn’t collapse because that’s HIS universe. It’s HIS story to tell, and sure the plot changed along the way, but he’s still telling it.

The same with 42-Miles. His story was drastically changed because he wasn’t bitten by that spider, but his universe isn’t collapsing because he’s the one still telling the story. He’s still shaping his own future.

And like how Miles inspired Peter B to have Mayday at all. Without Miles, Peter wouldn’t have gone back to his and he wouldn’t have had Mayday. But his universe isn’t collapsing because that’s a decision PETER made. No one forced him to make up with MJ and have Mayday. But Miles gave him faith and inspired him to go back and give life another try. (Don’t even get me started how Peter would have literally DIED if not for Miles. He was going to stay in Miles dimension. He was fully ready to deteriorate. He literally would have died if not for Miles saying “NO BITCH YOU GOTTA GO HOME” much less inspiring him to have Mayday, I’m just saying I’m just saying.)

And the thing is I don’t think Miquel realizes that. He’s so caught up in his grief and anger that he’s completely consumed with following canon and my never disrupting ANYTHING. He doesn’t realize that that universe collapsed because he tried to change someone ELSES story. He tried to become someone else to live their story. He didn’t try to make his own and that’s not how it works.

Idk just thinking thots tonight, And ATSV is always at the top of my brain

[porto-rosso]

when people say tim drake has no personality like oh you dont even know about the unwavering faith in a flawed cause you were loyal to long before being a part of?? 🤨