#unpredictable power

[dk-thrive]

an agitation, an erratic pulse, a certain power—some quality that had never failed to magnetize...

— Catherine Lacey, Biography of X: A Novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, March 21, 2023)

[itslookingback]

message to all trans people please survive

[frownyalfred]

“Batman’s only a good fighter if he has prep time, it’s not realistic”

But that’s his thing. He either has prep time and uses it, does research, determines possible outcomes, and evaluates from there, or he doesn’t.

In situations where he doesn’t have prep time, do you know what he tends to do? He gets the hell out of there. I can’t count how many times Batman escapes a sudden scenario just so he can have some space and time to reevaluate.

He knows that an unpredictable situation is exactly that. But thirty feet away? With some breathing room? He can prep again, whether it takes days or just a few minutes.

Batman isn’t just a good planner. He knows when to bail and reevaluate. It’s one of the best skills to develop, vigilante or not.

[darlingod]

It’s just… it is everything that Cardan thought Jude would notice his “SO OBVIOUS” exile riddle and thinks Jude to not hesitate to come back. Beside his certainty of her cleverness to piece the riddle together, he believed he was that clear about his feelings toward her; he had thought she absolutely ought to know how he feels for her.

Like oh buddy. BUDDY. Your wife had thought of the answer to your little riddle like you thought she would. But guess what? She has detrimental TRUST ISSUES. (Like… Ur super mean and hot, I can’t blame her.) Anyway.. it’s SUPER adorable of him to so wholeheartedly believe she wouldn’t question his trust. It reveals so much about his pov of thier relationship.

Jude thought Cardan’s (silly) trick was a (vile) trick, when it was simply a: “Im trying to impress/pay you back in kind with our romantic metaphorical sparring and eventually get you out of political drama for a bit,” trick.

I’m fucking laughing wow these delusional ass children I fucking love them.

[canisalbus]

So under that bug comic (wonderful btw) you mentioned that Machete's more afraid of horses. Does Vasco know this? I'm imagining Vasco leading out one of his horses like "look at this gorgeous beast!" And he looks over to see Machete's reaction and he's so terrified he looks like he's about to throw up

Well, not initially, but it comes up pretty early on I think. Vasco likes horses and talking about his horses. He probably has hard time believing anyone could be scared of them until he witnesses one of the uneasy Machete + horse encounters in person.

It's not like Machete gets panic attacks just from thinking or looking at horses. He can observe them from a respectful distance just fine, or ride a coach or a carriage since you're not directly in contact with them that way. But they do unnerve him (which in turn unnerves the horses he meets) and he avoids getting too close to them.

I think over time and thanks to gradual desensitization he becomes a little more used to being aroud them though. I'm not 100% sure if he'd ever agree to ride one but enough to touch without sweating bullets maybe. Above all he respects and admires Vasco's horsemanship skills and the bond he shares with his animals.

[tubborucho]

I think the Federation is scared of both Bad and Tubbo the same amount.

But they are scared of Bad, because he is powerful, terrifying and can outplay them if they are not careful.

And they are scared of Tubbo like I am scared to leave my dog alone in a room with food in the open, no matter how out of reach it is for him – you never know what he will break and how he will weasel his way to somewhere he shouldn’t be.

[ineed-to-sleep]

ENDING SPOILERS FOR BG3 AHEAD

Hate that I found this scene kinda hot

[wisteria-question-mark]

guys i dont think yall understand i see people saying stuff like "wc!shubble character motivation is just shits & gigs" and like "*insert cc name*'s lore is so angsty."

SHUBBLE'S LORE IS SO ANGSTY. WDYM "people don't like me very much bc I just get everything wet :(, some people just don't know how to appreciate the rain" IS NOT THE ANGST??? And also the other server members can just *negate* her powers (clear weather spell)?? excuse me?? and in the deep dark, her powers were literally *useless* and she was rendered powerless?!?!?! GUYS WC!SHUBBLE HAS SUCH A COMPLEX RELATIONSHIP W/ HER POWERS. THERE IS SO MUCH POTENTIAL TRAGEDY, SELF-HATRED, TRAUMA, AND LACK OF SELF-ESTEEM RELATED TO THIS.

i promise y'all some of the others' lore is gonna be so detached from their character and shoe-horned in but NOT SHUBBLE ANGST. NOT SHUBBLE ANGST.

[finncakes]

"Nana lied to us. She hid the truth. She wrote the letters. She gave the gifts. Our parents ran."

listening to ExU after everything makes it 100% more painful! you should try it!

[spearxwind]

now im thinking about cercerion and how ive been wanting to do more soulsborne mockups of him as a boss, the problem is that i have way too many titles I want to give him because all of them sound so cool

so what I've compromised with until now is that he would be a three phase boss, the first phase being regular Cer (blue) "The Grief of the Storm", the second phase would be Rion (orange) "The Tyrant of the Storm" and the last phase would be both of them (both blue and orange clashing for dominance) "Cercerion, The Apocalypse"

during the last fight the more you damage his health bar the more the name glitches out and turns into "YOU REAP WHAT YOU HAVE SOWN" and the more intense the fight gets the more the map gets destroyed with huge chunks of earth flying up into the sky because of the electromagnetic field he's generating

since his whole story arc is about repenting for what he did (destroyed the world by losing control and giving into anger) it'd be really really ironic to have him be a boss fight where you FORCE him to destroy the world just to fight you

and then maybe you do kill him at the end. but at what cost.

[ardentpoop]

[ljesaw]

can’t stop thinking about somebody saying that zuko is constantly going against his very nature in order to be evil and i will be crying about it forever frankly

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

laymen often comment that the primal forces of magic in fact seem rather underpowered; that it is only by marrying two or more of them together that one can achieve any kind of usefulness. this is the result of abandoning depth for breadth, but an understandable decision. the difficulty encountered is that in order to excel, truly excel at any one primal force, one must alter their understanding of reality fundamentally.

mages of space view the world as expanses, more easily manipulated once grasped, for good and for ill—they become impossible to disorient, but extremely dense objects feel, to their magic, like impossibly vast distances. time mages, on the other hand, eschew distance and see everything as a long line of history. a mage of time can take that line and follow it back to its source, or use it to choose the future they find most preferable.

to a mage of light, the world becomes not space or time or air or gravity, but rather: a series of laws. of facts, and extrapolations following the facts. but seeing is only the first step: the second is daring to take one's own pen and strike out the lines of the contract deemed undesirable.

it is then perhaps unsurprising that the students of light were the ones who set their sights so high. believing fully in their own right to determination, they identified the chief bottleneck in their abilities and sought to remove it. each magical force filters through a divinity—save now for one. the mages of light have killed their god.

[thedreadvampy]

christ almighty some people are sad fucking miseries huh

[naomiknight-17]

The dental hygienist I had today knew that I have anxiety issues so she was reassuring me that the x-rays were quick and safe and (between having uncomfortable x-ray equipment in my mouth) I was like, oh no, that doesn't scare me

I know that the x-rays are low-level and quick enough to not cause any damage. Basic radiation safety; time, distance, shielding. My body is shielded (they put that lead-lined drape over your torso) and yes it's close but the exposure is vanishingly brief

And she was like, oh wow, you're kind of brilliant huh? And I'm like, no, I'm just very interested in radiology. I'm hoping to find a job somewhere in that field

She goes, "Really? I find radiology SO boring! If you get a radiologist job, you end up spending so much time sitting in a room alone examining scans!"

That... that sounds fantastic, actually. I would love that. I didn't have the chance to explain that my training would have me in more of an administrative position, not actually doing the radiography but... man. I wish I was doing the radiography

[voltrixz]

IM CRAZY IM CRAZY IM AGRHHH ARGHHH ARGHHH ARGHH (< started thinking about auditor again ) (also some rambling down below (grin)