#relatable fact

[mischievous-thunder]

It is what it is

[chloesimaginationthings]

I adore SOTM clean o vac so much,,,

[et-in-arkadia]

* * *

Mission mode change detected, now in Monument Mode Goodnight friends. After exchanging our final bits of data,

I will hold vigil on this spot in Mare Crisium to watch humanity's continued journey to the stars.

Here, I will outlast your mightiest rivers, your tallest mountains, and perhaps even your species as we know it.

But it is remarkable that a species might be outlasted by its own ingenuity.

Here lies Blue Ghost, a testament to the team who, with the loving support of their families and friends, built and operated this machine and its payloads,

to push the capabilities and knowledge of humanity one small step further.

Per aspera ad astra!

Love, Blue Ghost

* * *

no you are actively crying over a dying robot on the moon i am doing just fine thanks

[vintage-bentley]

“Girls and the gays” is so interesting because even though both parts of that statement describe lesbians, I always get the feeling that the people who say it are not thinking about lesbians at all

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

Of the 19 hijackers who carried out the Sept 11 attacks:

15 were from Saudi Arabia (a powerful/oil-rich country the U.S. works hard to maintain diplomatic relations with)

2 were from the United Arab Emirates (also a powerful/oil-rich country the U.S. works hard to maintain diplomatic relations with)

1 was from Egypt, 1 from Lebanon.

None of the hijackers were from Iraq.

None of the Sept 11 hijackers were Iraqi.

None of the 9/11 hijackers were from Iraq.

[nyanrial]

making little snowmen ⛄⛄

[dumblr]

There's a huge difference between replying and having a conversation, and very few people know the difference.

[getvalentined]

Thinking a lot recently about the constant comparison of Oblivion to Skyrim, particularly claims that Oblivion is superior in every way strictly by virtue of quest length and the greater grandiosity of the organizations in Oblivion, and I think there's been a fundamental misunderstanding of what's actually going on with Tamriel during the time period of Skyrim. Even though it's like...one of the core concepts of the main storyline.

Putting most of this under a cut for length, but I just...I think people misunderstand what's going on here. This is not a "One Game Good Other Game Bad" post, it's an analysis of a major, key difference in story basis between the two that I think gets lost in the (frankly asinine) argument about which is superior.

See, everything in Skyrim sucks. Every organization you can align yourself with is falling apart. Literally every single one.

That's the point.

To summarize:

The Companions (equivalent to the Fighters' Guild) are about a dozen strong, literally cursed, and their most beloved leader gets murdered very early in the storyline.

The College of Winterhold (equivalent to the Mages' Guild, not to the Arcane University) has seemingly only been saved from collapsing into the sea because a master of Restoration fused himself with the structure itself when the Sea of Ghosts tried to tear it down a little under a century ago and his presence is constantly physically "healing" the foundation.

The Thieves' Guild has lost the favor of every possible patron deity, having been outright cursed by Nocturnal after one of her Nightingales murdered another and stole the gift she offers her champion, while the boon that the organization's founder claimed from her in ages past (the cowl) is missing.

The Dark Brotherhood has been all but completely dismantled, the Night Mother's tomb in Bravil having been raided and struggling to persist without a Listener for over a decade; the bodies of the Night Mother's children have been lost and she's essentially being smuggled from region to region in an attempt to find a safe place to continue operations.

The Empire itself has been kneecapped, forced into a traumatic treaty by a fascist regime determined to strike the beliefs and culture of anyone not Altmer off the face of the planet; the Thalmor have gone so far as to torture and radicalize the figurehead leader of the Nords in order to use their own nationalism and superiority against the Empire, sparking a civil war that will further weaken the Empire and allow the Aldmerri Dominion to destroy it wholecloth.

This extends out into the rest of the world, too! We have confirmed existence of Hist-deaf Argonians. The Dunmer are floundering to recover after the quadruple-whammy that is the fall of the Triumverate, the destruction of Vivec City when Baar Dau finally made impact, the Red Year, and the Argonian uprising. The Bosmer are literally endangered due to habitat loss following a super-isolationist cultural shift due to wars with the Khajiit and Altmer. The Void Nights were devastating to Khajiit culture and population in ways that have yet to be fully explained.

The world is falling apart. Everything is dying.

And then Alduin shows up.

We all kind of talk about Alduin carrying on as World-Eater through the course of the Skyrim storyline like it's him being a piece of shit, since he'd started it ages ago and was just displaced in time to land on the Last Dragonborn's head in the Fourth Era, but I don't think that's the case.

Based on the state of things, I think Alduin arrived right on time. I think it's the end of the world. The only reason he "should" be stopped is because the Last Dragonborn has the capacity to stop the world from ending in a more down-to-earth sense than just defeating Alduin: they can't save everyone, but they can "fix" every single organization that's holding "the world" together.

They can align with the Imperials and keep the civil war from further crippling them, keeping the Empire from being too weak to push back against the Aldmerri Dominion.

They can save the College of Winterhold, the only group in the right place at the right time to stop the Eye of Magnus from opening, and in doing so make sure that the Psijics are able to put it somewhere nobody else can find it.

They can lead the Companions, cure the curse for those members who don't want to run with Hircine after death, which bolsters their spirits enough to keep doing what they can even when everyone else is trying to kill each other. A single neutral martial force in the middle of a civil war.

They can regain Nocturnal's trust for the Thieves' Guild, restore the Nightingales, and in doing so they can return the luck that was stolen from them as punishment for Mercer Frey's transgression. They can even reclaim the Crown of Barenziah and award the guild with a paragon to increase their newly-regained luck.

They can hear the Night Mother, becoming Listener for the Dark Brotherhood to restore the balancing force of Sithis in the world, purify the most broken Sanctuary the Brotherhood has ever had, and finish a story set into motion way back in the Third Era—Emperor Titus Mede II is murdered under the order of a Motierre, a descendant of a mark the Brotherhood specifically kept from dying during the Oblivion Crisis.

The Last Dragonborn can't do anything outside Skyrim—there's nothing they can do for the Argonians or the Bosmer or the Khajiit, and they can only do very little for the Dunmer via work in Solstheim—but they can work with every single guild or guild-adjacent group, strengthening the Empire to stand against the biggest threat to Tamrielic culture since the First Era, and in doing so they can make it so the world isn't ready for Alduin to eat it.

The Hero of Kvatch exists when Tamriel, and presumably Nirn as a whole is in the prime of its life, that's what makes the Oblivion Crisis such a big deal. This is a world that isn't ready to give up, it still has the strength to fight, it just needs someone standing at the head to direct it. The Last Dragonborn comes into the story when everything is falling apart and nothing really feels worthwhile, when it's hard to see why the world is worth saving. They have the chance to prove that there's still some life left here, that the world isn't too far gone to save—Alduin arrived right on time, it's the Last Dragonborn's job to change that.

I can see how coming from Oblivion to Skyrim would feel disappointing and hollow, but I'm pretty sure that's literally the point of the story.

Oblivion tells you the world is worth saving because it's got so much left to live for, even with the odds stacked so high against it. Skyrim asks you whether a world that's dying is still a world worth saving, and it's up to you to prove that it is.

[fluffymoe]

Hercia Koszykowa

[geekgirles]

Ironically, I feel we, as a Phandom, don't talk about Sam's Friend to All Living Things status enough.

[mischievous-thunder]

The plot must go on!

[cheshirecat-syndrome]

Your call

[butchhamlet]

maybe i actually just hate so many critical takes on taming of the shrew. i’m not denying that this play can be performed AND read as containing a genuine romance—petruchio and katherine have the stichomythic banter that tends to signal chemistry in other plays, and of course one can decide how much katherine is playing along with him out of delight—but i feel about this play the way dara horn feels about the merchant of venice, that being “why does it feel like the entire world is trying to convince me that calling a bigoted play a bigoted play is the resort of the un-academic idiot?” “Staring into my phone, I sank into my own insecurity, which took the form of a belief that centuries of Shakespearean scholars, and Shakespeare himself, must surely know more than I do.”

and i do think that “this is bigoted” can be used to shoo away discussion. calling taming misogynistic (or merchant antisemitic) strikes me as a better start than end—that assertion opens up a new conversation about how bigotries form and solidify over time, how shakespeare might (might!) have tried (and failed?) to subvert them, where these plays echo our modern day and where they don’t, what we can learn from them, and perhaps most importantly how we handle the idea of one of the Greatest Writers Of All Time™️ creating something that contradicts our values? but some of the abstracts i’ve read about this play seem to bend backward to avoid coming within ten feet of the word or concept of “abuse.” if you are going to argue that petruchio is “inviting katherine into a private world” between the two of them, that he is “playing language games,” that he is helping her “develop her imagination” and “navigate chaos” when he deprives her of food and sleep while constantly contradicting her perception of basic reality—well, god help you, go ahead and write it and cite your line references! but you might just want to acknowledge that you have heard of spousal abuse and gaslighting, just, like, discreetly the once, even if you’re arguing that that isn’t what this is, because if you can’t recognize that conversation about this play should Say Those Terms, then you might as well try to write about hamlet without using the words madness, mental illness, or suicide! and what have i got to take you seriously for!

[myloveonherknees]

@/mothercain. "alternate covers for preachers daughter, shot by my sister delilah" twitter, 18 may 2022.

[trans-axolotl]

nothing makes me more insane than the phrase "selling your body" btw. like was i not also selling my body at every other job i've had where i had to be on my feet all day, lifting boxes, working in a warehouse, etc. why is it that sex work is uniquely labeled as "selling your body" while every other job is sorted into another category, no matter how much that job might have a physical impact on your body. lmao.