#because we're nerds

[flannelepicurean]

Joined a friendo in doing an online module class situation for medieval calligraphy because he was sitting next to me at the table and demanded I get in on the action. I was explaining the intricacies and foibles of calligraphing as a leftie, but sometimes when a delightful human keeps thrusting a goose quill pen at you and insisting you have a good time, you just relent and do it.

And when you finish your janky alphabet practice and they tell you, "Now make something silly!" Well... you remember that they are the reason you were able to watch Theeeee Karate Kid Part 3 and meet Terry Roundhouse Caperscheme Silver. And you remind THEM that Cobra Kai never dies.

(It had exactly the desired effect of eliciting ebullient, near-falling laughter. Crane-kicked their heart right in the face with friendship. Point: me. 😂🏆😁🥰)

[molinaesque]

Astarion: I think he likes us. Tav: I like him, too. But I'd never say it to his smarmy face. Raphael has a crush on Tav and tries real hard to act cool about it.

[bruciemilf]

Comic book writers who still make Bruce hit his kids even after years of mass criticism from fans who TELL you it's a bad creative choice that pushes them away from the fan base and comics in general,,, you did this for what?

[hilacopter]

I think so much of internet leftist brainrot is just "in order to solve bad thing we must do the bad thing backwards"

[astriiformes]

Comparing your work to other people's is a great way to kill your joy for a thing so let me be clear and say this is not that, I am just a human person with human emotions and sometimes that means needing to be the tiniest bit petty and then moving on. You know. For your health or something.

There is a very popular cosplayer who coincidentally keeps doing the same costumes as me, and I am just the tiniest bit annoyed about it, because as is the case with many (...most) very popular cosplayers, they have a very specific, airbrushed, conventionally attractive, perfect makeup, etc aesthetic to all their photos that is. Not what I personally value in cosplay, at least. Which is fine! Different people having different approaches to costumes is part of what makes cosplay such an interesting hobby!

But it does bother me a tiny bit that the work I put into my costumes is not necessarily the kind of work that gets attention, and it does make it a little glaringly obvious when it's The Same Characters.

(Also you all know the kinds of characters I cosplay. I gravitate towards them in part because they have weird energy, not super put together attractive energy. But that's only part of my point.)

Anyways. I do not follow them on Instagram because why would I do that, but nonetheless I saw that they're apparently also doing a Laois cosplay now, which I guarantee will get lots more attention than mine. And for the most part that's fine, I love cosplay and I love doing my weird little thing and I especially love that I do in fact know other people that value the same things as me & that we have fun together. I will have a great time in my fun little costume, dressing up with my friends in their fun little costumes and I am looking forward to it. And I do not actually need likes to validate that I am becoming a pretty damn good cosplayer (whose stuff is better quality than many popular cosplayers' because I care more about craftsmanship than I do getting attention). I am even thinking pretty seriously about having Laois be my first ever competition costume if the armor turns out alright, because I think I'm genuinely getting to that level.

But it would just be kind of neat if being a weird little guy with weird little ideas who is into the hobby because I like sourcing historical patterns and materials and thinking about the worldbuilding that goes into costumes and creating neat little "in-universe" ephemera to hand out to people and all the things I like didn't always mean getting overshadowed by Instagram Perfect Attractive People.

Alas. Okay glad that's out of my system I'm normal again. I'm going to make some more chain mail.

[lucreziagiovane]

this dork is always replying to the stuff i write to him ❤️‍🩹

[swordheld]

hi! your blog is one of my favourites and i absolutely adore reading your thoughts. my grandfather recently passed away and it feels like i lost myself with him. how do i continue living after this? there is this constant weight on my chest and it feels like an emptiness has made a home inside of me. how do i go on when it feels like the world crashed on my shoulders?

hello, love! this is so very sweet and kind of you, and i hope you're treating yourself gently and kindly right now - there aren't words for a loss like this. that heaviness is difficult, and hard, and painful. it's okay if things don't feel okay, right now, or even soon - i think that's something that a lot of the people i know that have gone through similar grief feel: like they should be able to get back to a relative 'normal' in a [insert far too short period of time].

but it's okay if it hurts. that's where i'd like to start. you're allowed to feel that emptiness, that world-crashed feeling that goes beyond words, beyond time. don't feel like you have to rush this to feel some sort of better. things get easier with time, i promise you this, but sometimes painful feelings are important to feel, too. cry, scream, feel your emotions. they're a part of you. grieve.

it's perhaps a little silly, but when i think about death i always think about a couple of space songs: mainly drops of jupiter by train and saturn by sleeping at last. there are perhaps others that speak to the emotions better, but these two have always hit something a little deeper for me, and are popular for a wide-reaching reason.

and while personally i don't know much about grief like this, i do know a lot about love; and i think they're a lot of the same thing.

the people we love are a part of us, and this is why it takes from us so deeply when we lose them, because it does feel like we've lost a part of ourselves in the wake of it. but it's because they were so central to our experiences of living - our lives, that the separation introduces a hollowness - a place where they used to be. a home that now goes unlived in.

an emptiness, like you said.

but just because they're not here physically, doesn't mean he's not still there, in your heart, in your life, your memory. you can hold him close in smaller ways, as well: steal a sweater, or cologne/scent for something a little more physical and long lasting for remembering. hold onto the memories you cherish, the things that made you laugh, the ease of slow mornings and gentle nights. write them all down, slide a few photographs in there, go through it and add more when you miss him. keep them all close, keep them in your heart.

you're not alone, in this. he's still there, with you, it's just - in the little things.

he's with you in the way you see and go about your daily life, in doing what he liked to do, in the ways he interacted with the world that you shared with him. the memories you recall fondly when the night is late or the moment is right and something calls it into you like a melody, an old bell, laughter you'd recognize anywhere.

but i think, perhaps most importantly above all others - talk about him. with your family, your friends, his friends, strangers; stories are how we keep the people we love alive. the connections they've made, the legacies and experiences they've left behind, and so, so many stories.

how lucky, we are - to love so much it takes a piece of us when they go. grief is the other side of the coin, but it does not mean our love goes away. it lives in you. it lives in everyone who knew him, in the smallest pieces of our lives.

the people we love never really leave us, like this: they're in how we cook and the way we fold our newspapers, our laundry, in the radio stations we tune in to and the way we decorate our walls, our photo albums. they're in the way we store our mail, organize our closets, the scribbled notes in the indexes of our books. the meals we love and the drinks we mix, the way we spend time with one another. they've been passed down for generations, for longer than history - and we are all the luckier for it.

think about what you shared with him, and do it intentionally. bring him into your life, like this, again. whether it's crosswords or poetry or sports or anything else. if one doesn't help, try another. something might click.

i hope things feel a little easier for you, as they tend to do only with time. i hope you find joy in your grief, even if it is small and hard to grasp at first. know that your hurt stems from so much love that there isn't a place to put it properly, and that it is something so meaningful and hurting poets and storytellers have been struggling to put it into words and sounds that feel like the fit right for eons, and that it is also just simply yours. sometimes things don't have to make sense. sometimes they just are - unable to be put into words or neat little sentiments, as unfair and tragic as they come.

but i promise it will not feel like this forever. your love is real. and perhaps, on where to begin on from here - i think it's less on finding where to begin and just beginning. and you've already started. you've taken the most important and crucial step: the first one. wherever you go, after that, from here? you'll figure it out. you always have, and you always do. it'll come, as things always do. love leads us, as does light - and you're never alone in your hurt. in your grief, your missing something dear to you. i think if you talk about it with others, you'll find they have ways of helping you cope as well - and they have so much love of their own to spare, too.

as an aside, here is the song (northern star by dom fera) i was listening to when i wrote this, for no other reason more than it makes me think of connections, and love, and how we hold onto the people we love and how they change us, wonderfully and intrinsically. it's a little more joyous than the others i've mentioned, and plays like a story, and it made me think of what is at the core of this, love and stories and i am here with you, and maybe it'll bring you some joy, if you'd like it. wishing you all my love and ease 💛

[thatsparrow]

giving psych another go after having watched the first season and a bit a couple years ago before stopping because I hadn't really been feeling it

only like six or seven eps in this time, and I am enjoying it, and I would like to stick with it this time, but god, now I do remember why I gave up on it in the first place. for all the show has going for it (which is a lot!) so much of the tone (and shawn is usually the biggest offender) falls back on those really insufferable attitudes from the mid ’00s of like. hit on every woman you see, getting laid is always the biggest priority. kneejerk disdain for anything nerdy or "uncool." I'm a guy and that means I care about porn and sports and that's it

[papermonkeyism]

Doing some research for DnD character reasons and, man. I've always disliked how gods are depicted in DnD based fantasy books, but hot dang this is such a massive clusterfuck of all my least favourite tropes and stuff and my pagan arse is just squicked so bad like.

This is an absolute dung pile of several decades worth of a morally black and white fighting game built on very weird set of pantheon that disregards how actual religions work, how cultures work, and wants to have its cake while eating it too with treating its gods as simultaneously a rogues gallery of heroes and villains as well as xtianity-like omnipotense and blind worship and I haaaaaaaaate it. So bad.

So gods have worshippers that are all very devout because that's how worship works I guess, but if you worship an evil alignment god then you're evil cultist and a bad guy and hey guess what, the goddess of oceans is chaotic evil! (Her title according to this wiki is even the Bitch Queen. Fuck you.) As well as most other ocean related deities, because sea monsters are cool to fight! So hey, my character has a background of sailing so fuck me I guess. (The non-evil options are a former actual sea captain who won a bet against said sea goddess and ascended and now is just a dude who, while benevolent because of good-alignment-by-technicality, mostly ignores his worshipers; a god of water-as-an-elemental-plane because classical elements of air-water-fire-earth are universal I guess; and a definetely good water goddess, who's all gentle and stuff because good alignment and who's titles include stuff like Mother of Water and stuff, but which is implied to be the deity of inland waters like lakes, rivers and streams etc.)

What is nuance anyway, you can't fit that into a stat sheet you know.

Hate it!

[sagechan]

HUH??

tell me how a ship name gets oversexualized. what are you talking about it's a word

keep their names out of your morally purist mouth!! 💀

[drakkonyan]

Reminder that hating humans is not an alternative to loving nature. You add nothing by saying you wish human kind went extinct. You add nothing by saying humans are irredimable monsters. You are helping no harmed animal nor plant nor fungi nor microorganism by shitting on humans and, as a nature lover, you are my least favorite kind of "nature lover" because you don't like nature, you hate humans

[bonefall]

Briarlights death makes sense to me. As much as I love her character, the movement technology you’ve come up with wouldn’t be enough to keep her alive in a society where her nether regions are constantly exposed to the outdoors. She would get UTIs and kidney infections very quickly, which would be fatal when you can’t feel pain. My partner has to use catheters to avoid them (he is paralyzed in the same spot Briarlight would be.)

I think it’s disingenuous to have a character that’s paralyzed but have no other health problems or concerns regarding it, even if it’s uncomfortable to think about for some readers. It’s just as ableist to minimize the additional struggles she’d face as it is to kill her off unnecessarily.

Not accusing you of ableism, but expressing my concern. They’d need to find a way for her to poop and pee in a way that’s sanitary and a way to combat infections long term - even if the thought is “gross” to some people it’s the reality she’d have to live with. She should, at the very least, remain immunocompromised.

That is a valid concern. I will keep this in mind-- I'll make sure to note her immediately being cleared out of camp at the first sign of sniffles to avoid it. My cats can do some very minor building and there are now several cats on Jayfeather's Garden Patrol, it wouldn't be too much of a problem to make that area into a comfortable "satellite camp".

I do want to add though that my most important guiding principle is a stronger narrative which includes better portrayals of disabled characters, not perfect rugged woodsman realism. The medicine I add and the guides I write are in the hopes of better representing the lives of the real-life people who see themselves in the fantasy battle cats.

Realism does factor into that of course! But it goes out the door the minute it would smash up against a disabled character's inclusion. This is a series for human beings like your partner; as close to it as I can get by bending the setting when needed.

For example, Epilepsy

Epilepsy was deadly before modern medicine. Full stop. The herbs I created for that guide would not save someone like Shadowsight, whose convulsions are at extreme risk of turning into Status Epilepticus. It would help manage, but Shadowsight's life would have been very brief.

All the chamomile in the world wouldn't replace phenobarbital... or even the older medications, barbituates. Barbituates have been replaced and good riddance, but it's important to understand that even this drug known for causing EXTREME lethargy and horrible side effects was revolutionary. It saved countless lives.

But I'm not here to write a story for the real-life horror that is epilepsy in a pre-modern society. I'm here for the parent who personally thanked me for making their daughter feel less alone.

Evil spirits attacking the living! God knocking over trees! Attacking a bulldozer! That all happens; there's no reason they can't help Briarlight too!!

But I'll make sure to include her being immunocompromised. And I'll include ways they handle that. Just like I included a cat engineer who made a blanket sled.

So... suggestion accepted! I will keep this in mind.

Briarlight's Canon Death

...I will maintain though that the canonical death of Briarlight was one of the worst, most short-sighted, cruelest decisions that has ever been made in this series.

Because ultimately Briarlight is not a real person. She is a writing choice. She is a character based on Vicky's paralyzed cousin, "Dan," and Briarlight was directly modeled on Dan's personality and recovery.

What did the new writing team do, the minute they were writing a series without Vicky? Killed Briarlight to fucking greencough. For shock points. Narrative moves right on back to the MAIN conflict-- Alderheart having feelings for Velvet and Jayfeather enforcing the vow of chastity. ShadowClan officially falls apart in the background lol

It was never about realism, or realistic portrayal of disability.

This series doesn't care about realism when cats have bloody Freddy Kruger deaths in their sleep, or when shadow goo starts eating cat hell, or when lightning strikes Shadowsight. But they suddenly care about how realistic it is that the only paralyzed character survives greencough?? No! Of course not!

In the middle of the CONSTANT "Ohh she's finally in heaven where she can run and jump and not have a disabled life"? And the infamous Squirrelflight's Hope line, "You don't want to be alive again, Squirrelflight! You might become disabled like BRIARLIGHT"

(WHICH BTW THEY STILL HAVE NOT REMOVED DESPITE PROMISING IT YEARS AGO)

I absolutely do not believe for a second that they had a realistic portrayal of an immunocompromised cat in mind when they did it! Hell, screw it. I'll just say it outright;

I firmly believe that the new writing team killed Briarlight because they did not want to deal with her.

I flatly refuse to give them charity towards this choice. At NO POINT did they earn a speck of good faith. They continued every negative trend that was set up by the previous writers (including Vicky herself tbf), and went a step further by killing her to "we need to get rid of some randos" disease.

Not only that; but the Clan dynamics were NEVER the same after her death, because there was no character who could replace her personality. In this cast of cardboard cats, they plucked out one of the few optimists with a clear, unique perspective, not shared by ANYONE else.

My ire wouldn't JUST be because they happened to kill a disabled character in the way they did (though that is frustrating on its own imo). It's because it was Briarlight.

I hope every writer involved with the decision to kill Briarlight in the "Nothing is Happening! Quick! Kill Someone!" book of AVoS chokes on it. I will DIE on this hill and my blood will never wash out of the grass.

[nerd-cat-rambles]

Bro my problems feel so itty bitty but this shit annoys me so bad so here we go :3

My friend keeps ditching me w/out even realising that she's doing it. She's one of my only friends in some classes, I have a bunch of friends in general and a couple of groups to hangout with if my main group goes into flames so it's not a BIG issue, but in those classes it is.

We sit together in Geography, Science, PosEd <- Therapy but we don't need it, and RAVE <- religious education. So in all 9 classes (because of multiple a week).

And I was like "Oh --- do you want to sit with me in RAVE" and she's like "Sure!" then 5 seconds later without batting an eyelash at it she goes "Oh sorry Cat (<- not my real name) I'm sitting with X"

Girl you just promised ME that you would sit with ME. Not them??? You could've said no?

And then we sit together too (with our group) and when X comes up she just ditches us without saying anything.

In Geography and Pos.Ed today she sat with X and didn't even bother asking me if I wanted to join, but we have a seating plan?!

Like, honestly, it's perfectly fine if she wants to hang out with other people. But she just doesn't tell me when she does, and the lack of communication is what's upsetting me.

I'm going to talk to her about it at some point but for now I don't know what to do lol.

Grade school ahh issue, but it's annoying that she's ditching me for no reason

[hum-suffer]

Patne ko taiyaar hu, koi patane wala chahiye

Photo to hai, koi Sundar kehne wala chahiye

Phool to hai, koi baalon mein lagane wala chahiye

Payal to hai, koi pehnane wala chahiye

Gajra to hai, koi Gajra lagane wala chahiye

Gaana to hai, koi saath gaane wala chahiye

Scooty to hai, koi piche baithne wala chahiye

Dandiya to hai, koi saath garba karne wala chahiye

Nahkre hai, koi jehlne wala chahiye

Baatien hai koi sune wala chahiye

Chocolate hai, koi lene wala chahiye

Atm card to hai, bank mein Paisa chahiye

[tadpoles-and-daydreams]

this isn't about witchcraft but I don't even care, I just found out my special interest game is getting an update today in like five hours and somehow I missed that memo???? I was burnt out so I wasn't paying attention and now I'm hearing that we're getting a new main quest, specifically the quest in which the formula is "this one guy shows up, drops the biggest lore bomb, and then leaves."

needless to say I am FROTHING AT THE MOUTH no one's gonna hear from me for like a month on my main (/j) it's all gonna be my alt's sideblog (yes I have three Tumblr blogs, shhh) screaming about this nonstop. because I'm one of those players who doesn't ever actually play the game but will never shut up about the worldbuilding and ✨LORE✨ and we're getting a quest that will, most likely, once again shift the entire perspective of the world a little to the left.

[n4rval]

a little pause on art for finals(they are all late) but boy has brain been braining

more specifically on dings' dynamic as asriel and chara's weird uncle bc that's just something i don't see a lot