#draft purge

[kaiasky]

in our midst are people who have never read homestuck but pass unnoticed because they seem like they should have. perhaps they have picked up some lingo, like they vaguely know that "abscond" or "vriska" are homestuck words. Always be vigilant and remember u can never trust ur neighbors completely

[kpopphile4lyfe]

You've Got Mail (1998), dir. Nora Ephron

[hungergameshyperfixation]

You can (rightly) criticize Sunrise on the Reaping all you want, but in my opinion one of the objectively best things to come from it is all of the fanart. You can’t tell me that isn’t a good thing. All of the fanart >>>>>

Almost every piece of SotR-based fanart has been absolutely excellent and I love everyone who adds to it. Beautiful beautiful no notes

🩷💜💙 💖 💜🖤🩶🤍

[luthiest]

more from last summer

[tlouramblings]

Around the time episode 6 was airing on HBO someone shared their viewpoint on the argument scene and I’ve never been able to look at it the same.

It’s the turning point of their relationship.

“After this Elie stops viewing Joel as a parental figure, and more as an equal. While Joel allows himself to accept he sees Ellie as a daughter and starts treating her like one.”

I think the winter section of the game really furthers this, as she is forced to think like an adult. She has to find a way to save Joel and keep them alive, despite the hunters, harsh winter, and Davids group. I think it also sets up the storyline of her moving into the garage in part 2.

He becomes more gentle and less snappy with her. He allows her to ask more questions and does his best to answer them and let her know when they are too much.

They both do complete 180s with their characters.

She becomes harder from being traumatized by the world. Whilst, he becomes softer from beginning to heal from his own trauma from the world. This is very apparent in the spring section. She becomes the quiet one, while he’s trying to make conversation and connect with her.

I think that’s also part of the reason Ellie is so furious at him for the hospital. He made it clear she wasn’t his daughter and that her life ‘means’ something to the fireflies.

Ellie’s never had an active parent in her life, so she doesn’t understand the unconditional love that comes with it.

[royallygray]

"If you know Hermitcraft you know that Etho is absolutely obsessed with Joel." -Grian 2024

[sparklestheunicorn]

WAIT as far as we know, Kevin day was not born into the mafia lifestyle. He was raised by his mum until... he wasn't. Sure he was raised around tetsuji and riko. But as far as we know was not a part of the cult/mafia lifestyle until kayleigh died.

Do not think about his transition period. Hugging his knees as he tried to get to sleep in a black and red room. Wishing for his mum so badly it feels like he's dying. Realising the 1 and 2 are more than just a little bit of fun to do with the number on their backs. And then - I like to imagine it happened slowly - becoming riko's punching bag, maybe a bit of knifework.

[theoutcastrogue]

Faced with the threat of invaders, Ikaria residents adopted an audacious strategy: moving their homes into the mountains so that the island would appear abandoned from the sea. "Anti-pirate houses" are squat, stone-built dwellings that blend into Ikaria's landscape.

(The history of Ikaria is fascinating, so I’m gonna add some notes)

the sea was both Ikaria's blessing and curse. It allowed the island to spread its reputation for its excellent – and potent – Pramnian wine, and trade its prized product across ancient Greece, along with olives and honey. But the sea also brought pirates, lured by the island's highly regarded produce and the prosperity it brought.

Ikaria never had a reputation of prosperity, on the contrary it had a reputation of poverty. It had olives and wine? Congratulations, so did literally everyone else. What it didn’t have was a good natural harbour, which put it at an immediate disadvantage against all its neighbours, who had olives and wine AND a bunch of other products AND a harbour. Most notably Rhodes, which was right next door and rich as fuck. In the antiquity, the main reason to go to Ikaria was its hot springs, some temples, and not much else.

Ikaria was not unique within Greece in being beleaguered by pirates, but it suffered the additional complication of a revolving door of rulers. The Persian Empire, the Delian League association of Greek city states, the Romans, the Byzantine Empire, the Republic of Genoa and the Knights of St John all exercised varying degrees of influence over Ikaria between 500 BCE and 1521 CE, at which point Ikaria fell firmly into the Ottoman Empire, where it would remain for more than three centuries.

“Revolving door of rulers” is a pretty standard situation in the Mediterranean. Even before Ottoman rule, Ikaria develops a reputation of extreme poverty, and a culture of being poor – and yet self-sufficient. Ikarians might refuse luxuries even when they were offered to them. There were stories of travelers who’d insist on sleeping on the floor and subsisting on next to nothing (“ah yes, he’s Ikarian; they’re weird over there��). “Poor like an Ikarian” became an idiom. The Knights of St John at some point gained sovereignty over Ikaria by treaty, and didn’t even bother to send anyone to collect taxes. They were like bah, never mind, they got no money there. In fact, for a span there was no currency left on the island, people traded a few goods with the outside world via good old barter, and would just... sort it out among themselves, sharing produce and labour. It was kind of a commune. Kind of. (There were still elders in charge; can’t get rid of the damn elders). 

There’s a local legend that perfectly illustrates this communal spirit: “Once the Ottoman tax-collector came to Ikaria, and ordered four local lads to carry him on a litter up to the mountain villages, where not even mules could tread. When they were far in the wilderness, the four lads chucked him off a cliff and killed him. The agha, the local lord, found out about the killing and ordered all Ikarians in the town to stand before him. “Who did this dreadful deed?” he asked them. And the Ikarians took a step forward, and said in one voice “All of us, my lord”. The agha was impressed, and extracted only minimal compensation from the town.”

Now, this literal “I am Spartacus!” moment is not history, it’s just a story, but it’s telling because it shows what image Ikarians had for themselves, what they aspired to be. And it’s different. Any other place in the vicinity would tell the legend of a heroic individual heroically defying the authorities all by his heroic lonesome, and here come these weird dirt-poor Ikarians and just go “all of us”. [See also Fuenteovejuna, a 1619 play by Lope de Vega, with a remarkably similar plot: the village of Fuenteovejuna in Castille is horribly oppressed by its landlord, a vile and sadistic Knight, until he gets murdered. When the crown investigates, all the peasants report that the culprit was "Fuente Ovejuna", the village itself. Realising that no one will confess and no one will inform, even under torture, and also that the fucker deserved it, the magistrate closes the investigation.]

In any case, Ikaria had neither taxes nor a strategic or geopolitical advantage to offer to states, which is why nobody bothered to take the island back after the Ottomans got hold of it, and some ignored it even when they had it. But for pirates, it was a target as much as any other place. Pirates grabbed people.

But due to its geography, the island was always an outpost of whichever territory it was within, and regular periods of instability, along with inadequately policed coastlines, allowed piracy to flourish.

While piracy was first reported on Ikaria in the 1st Century BCE, it became a more-or-less unchecked threat during Roman rule (late 3rd Century BCE to 5th Century CE) and Byzantine rule (5th to 12th Centuries CE). Then, after the arrival of the Genoese in the 14th Century, Ikarians resorted to destroying their own ports to deter invaders. Even this act was not enough.

The Romans did get rid of piracy for a hot second (i.e. they kept it all to themselves), but it didn’t last.

Lacking resources to repel their aggressors, islanders decided to call their bluff. They withdrew deep into their mountainous interior, going to every possible length to convince anyone sailing past that Ikaria was deserted by building communities that were ostensibly invisible – at least, in the days before electricity. It was this elaborate and audacious disappearing act, pulled off by islanders for several centuries, that I'd come to learn more about.

For comparison, what most islands did to fend off pirates was to retreat inland, move the main town / administrative centre from its natural location at the harbour to the top of whatever hill or mountain they had, and build a fort in it, with walls and iron gates.

The castle-village of Mesta, on the island of Chios, built in the ~12th c. to defend the locals from pirates. A bit later the Genoans fortified it further. Walls and turrets outside, and inside a labyrinth of narrow streets, stone buildings, and arches that connected second stories so that people could flee from one house to the other, or rush to each other’s defence. It was worth the expense for the Genoans, as the region produced mastic and brought in a lot of money. Ikaria was not so fortunate.

The idea was to be high enough to see ships coming and pirates landing, ring bells and/or light fires to let the population know, put everyone inside the gates, leave fields and animals and whatever valuables left outside undefended, and save the people. Because what pirates were mostly after was people.

the types of homes the retreating islanders decided to build in Ikaria [are] commonly known as "anti-pirate houses".

"Anti-pirate houses" are squat, stone-built dwellings that blend into Ikaria's landscape

These squat, stone-built dwellings incorporated natural features of the landscape, such as rocks, cliff overhangs and thickets. Boulders, which were strewn over the high mountain slopes, often formed much of the walls and ceiling, while dry-stone walls made up the other walls. Living arrangements were simple – houses had little more than a door and a hearth, as islanders would spend the majority of their time outdoors.

Ikarians were building homes designed to be seen by no-one, and to do it they had to go high up into the wilderness where they could not be observed from sea. There would have been many occasions from Roman times onward when they would have temporarily hidden in the mountains from invaders, so the possibility of doing so was always in their minds, if it were needed."  

It was the incorporation of Ikaria into the Ottoman Empire that persuaded Ikarians to completely decamp from the coast to the crags. The Ottomans proceeded to rule Ikaria laxly, allowing buccaneering to run rife as a means of disrupting and discouraging sea trade from other states.

Oh the ball had been lost long before the Ottomans came along. That said, they didn’t help.

The choices facing Ikarians under such threat were limited: fight, with scant means at their disposal, to their probable deaths; vacate the island for safer shores; or seek sanctuary in the safety of the mountains.

This time, however, it would be a long-term move. Islanders would conceal their society in the rocky upper reaches of Ikaria's Aetheras range for the next 300 years. This period was dubbed the "piratiki epochi" (pirate era), with the early years tellingly known as the "century of obscurity".

One theory is that Ikarians did vacate the island for safer shores, hence the century of obscurity. Small islands got depopulated and repopulated all the time (and often served as pirate hideouts when deserted by inhabitants). The other theory is that the Ikarians just hid so damn well, and they might have! That reputation and culture of extreme poverty must have come out an extreme situation.

[Aaaand this is where I ran out of steam. Go read the rest of the article!]

[wispstalk]

Modern AU Coradri is a twitch streamer and she has absolutely used her platform to run a pump and dump scheme with a bespoke shitcoin. No one is filing any lawsuits because she was cute and charming about it.

Tanis got into crypto mining back in 2012, based on the advice of some libertarian coworker, but he used it all to buy raw opium and dubious synthetic hallucinogens. Got sober and had nothing left when the value exploded. He will be pissed about this until the day he dies.

Martin has about fifty bucks in a few stablecoins to monitor the market, and a deranged pepe silvia board in his home office to track all the major crypto players. One of these days he's gonna make headlines when he and Elon Musk maul each other to death in Times Square

[noes-pillow]

@vanoé fans who like ripping their heart to pieces with angst...

Ur gonna wanna read this 💜 been working on it for awhile :)

date of origin:

alex from the present: keeping this self promo from last year bc OMG ITS BEEN A YEAR?!

[kaiasky]

cool thing abt hades 2 is. I'm seeing a lot of both friends and ppl online who. picked up hades 1 bc it had adaptive damage reduction mode and a cool story, and then w/ hades 2 (or once they were in the postgame of hades 1) they're like yeah i don't need the buff anymore.

idt there has to be only one way to do difficulty or get people into games but it's a rly cool demonstration of like if u say 'hey this game is for casuals too' suddenly a lot of those casuals will Not Be Casuals about your game

[kpopphile4lyfe]

Kiki's Delivery Service (1989), dir. Hayao Miyazaki

[hungergameshyperfixation]

The series starts with the sunrise on the reaping.

Technically. Literally.

All three of our protagonists-Katniss, Snow, Haymitch-all begin their journeys on the morning of the Reaping.

It's one of my favorite little details now with Sunrise on the Reaping coming out, just another way it seems to tie the series together and add a layer of cohesiveness to it.

[luthiest]

poland extras from the fall

[tlouramblings]

Forever wondering how Ellie moving into the garage went down.

Did she always claim it as her space? Or did she one day sit Joel down and talk about moving there?

What was Joel’s reaction? Did he try to talk her out of it? Or did he immediately accept she needed her own place?

He would rather have her in the backyard then somewhere else entirely

[royallygray]

Hi everyone.

I am of the great opinion that everyone in the Life series fandom should listen to the Newsies soundtrack.

Why? BECAUSE ITS A GREAT MUSICAL AND I LOVE IT but also:

Angst. Angst. Angst.

Hear me out: Once and For All. It's SO

Also Seize the Day. One for all and all for one. Strike.