#we are doing even less than nothing

[thecolorsfucked]

ppl who keep fussing about the efficacy of self immolation go outside and do literally anything that might put u at risk plz like lmao

[the-judicial-assistants-notebook]

not enough discussion about the gavins' complicated relationship with feminine-coded/beauty products, i don't think.

[nenoname]

stan twins the canon cptsd brothers i will always think about all your unaddressed issues that would make perfect plot fuel for your spinoff

and also the whole 'stan getting that poem by bill via a website which contrasts with bill getting one from the axolotl via a website' foreshadowing thing

like idk i would love something like su future but like more optimistic, aka not an accumulated breakdown that has to be mostly resolved off screen at the end :/// but something thats being kinda addressed throughout? (although would love to see one of them turn into a monster thats always fun lol)

stan having severe issues from his dad and those years of being homeless that we keep on getting more info on but never really getting confronted on (the drifter catalogue and tijuana incident...), him being completely alone for like twenty years when running the shack before soos comes along to the point that 1998 is noted as his low point, and him not really learning about bill+what he did to ford until ages after he killed him if he ever did get the full context

while i think amnesia and everyone seeing him as a hero actually helped with stan's 'i'm a worse version of my brother' thing its still a lingering issue too and we now got him being insecure over his own hands

ford being immediately thrown from 'being tortured by bill' to 'being stuck in the multiverse and being chased by bounty hunters constantly', him fully expecting himself to die when destroying bill, and him only now being safe for the first time in 30 years ....relatively safe, he's still in constant danger because of course he is

idk in the end the series wants them to be happy and they deserve it, its why i wasn't too worried about the book being like 'ooh bill is back!! and the book is haunting ford' thing cos i knew they'll be ok

[thepoisonroom]

'I flirted with the idea that instead of being trans that I was just a cross-dresser (a quirk, I thought, that could be quietly folded into an otherwise average life) and that my dysphoria was sexual in nature, and sexual only. And if my feelings were only sexual, then, I wondered, perhaps I wasn’t actually trans.

I had read about a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen, by a Northwestern University professor who believed that transwomen who were attracted to women were really confused fetishists, they wanted to be women to satisfy an autogynephilia. And though I first read about this book in the context of its debunkment and disparagement, I thought about the electricity of slipping on those tights, zipping up those boots, and a stream of guilt followed. Maybe this professor was right, and maybe I was only a fetishist. Not trans, just a misguided boy.

About a year later, on the Internet, I come across a transwoman who added a unique message to the crowd refuting this professor. Oh, I wish I remember who this woman was, and I wish even more that I could do better than paraphrase her, but I remember her saying something like this: “Well, of course I feel sexy putting on women’s clothing and having a woman’s body. If you feel comfortable in your body for the first time, won’t that probably mean it’ll be the first time you feel comfortable, too, with delighting in your body as a sexual thing?”'

-Casey Plett, Consciousness

[raayllum]

it's funny because in our two examples of "what does a high mage do" we see Viren be involved in basically every decision that Harrow makes as an advisor, even ones that wouldn't necessarily warrant it immediately, versus Callum, who *checks canon* isn't substantially involved in any decision Ezran makes as king in any given season

[moiraimyths]

Before we call anon rude because let’s see it from their perspective, imagine getting an entire feast to eat. That can be pretty hard to start with so much that’s going on, but if they start with one thing they know they’ll like (aka one character they like) that can be the start for them leaping to other characters to finish the story and the bigger story. I struggle the same way to start book series if I don’t have at least one character that drives me to read it, it’s all about what can be the hook to push them through. Sounds like the anon is neurodivergent (just a guess) so they might genuinely not see it as rude and see it as a solution to even play the game to start with.

Btw absolutely adore the game, the complex and rich characters making them all so unique is amazing. The art is so pleasing to the eyes I love it!! I’m waiting for it all to get out at once so I don’t get too impatient. Shae however interests me the most, which routes will have the most lore for them? Will there be routes that give more lore in general based on decisions you make or do they all share the same amount? (I mean general lore not just Shae lore)

Apologies; we are not trying to accuse any asker of being rude! We are simply explaining our perspective as the developers / are trying to broadly encourage folks to dip their toes into other areas of the story outside of the main route(s) they're interested in, especially considering some routes will be made available sooner than others, and these other routes will likely contain additional scenes/lore of everyone's fave(s) regardless! We want to give each main cast member an equal amount of love (and lore) regardless of their overall popularity, so our goal is not to tut-tut anyone for having strong preferences for one character over the others, but rather to explain that you may be surprised by how much *more* you learn about your preferred characters in the other routes. That's all!

For Shae... Well, they were a foot soldier for one of the worst periods of the War. Lore wise, any other story that touches on the War will likely have content relevant to them and their experiences. ^^

[lagosbratzdoll]

On Daenerys, Colonisation and Race Discourse within the ASOIAF Fandom

This has been on my mind for a good long while and honestly, as much as I would like to leave discourse in the pits, it has been bugging me intermittently over the past few weeks.

Far too many of you get on here and call people who like the fictional dragon-riding family, neo-Nazis and that sentiment is so prevalent, that white people feel comfortable telling me a black woman that I am a neo-Nazi for rooting for Daenerys Targaryen. I am upholding neo-Nazi power fantasies for wanting to see a little girl live at the end of a story. I am a neo-Nazi for wanting to see the rape survivor have the family she aches for and children with the man (or men) she loves.

Then, those same people go on spiels about how the systemic erasure of those who sing the song of the earth and other old races is not colonialism. That their removal from their home is not displacement but an agreement between two equal parties. The fact that the only place where those who sing the song of the earth exist in the present timeline is north of the wall, surrounded by the bones of their dead, is not a travesty. That the expulsion of the old races from their home isn't that bad and should not be condemned. 

Instead, people argue, completely seriously, that the harm that the First Men and Andals have caused is centuries in the past, so essentially the slate has been wiped clean. The logical leaps that are required to arrive at such a boneheaded conclusion are truly mind-boggling, and those who make such arguments are not good people. 

I am unsure how one could read those books and come away with the impression that the old races do not mourn the loss of their home. I am unsure how one could read The Last of the Giants[1] and Ygritte’s reaction to both the song and Jon’s dismissal of the ethnic cleansing of the giants then believe that the old races and the free folk have moved past their displacement. 

In Westeros, from the Wall to the broken arm of Dorne, they all speak one language despite the fact they are all different ethnicities and they all landed on the shores at different times. That is not the case in Essos, we have been introduced to at least six languages and in A Dance with Dragons, Tyrion notes that the Valyrian spoken in the Free Cities has evolved into nine distinct dialects, and they are well on their way to becoming different languages.

How would a continent as large and diverse as Westeros maintain its hegemony over the people if not for forced assimilation, discriminatory practices and violence? The brutal repression required to keep one house in power for thousands of years is nothing to sniff at. The suppression required to keep the vast majority of Westeros worshipping one (or seven) gods. The systems in place ensure that language does not grow or evolve amongst the highborns at least.

Centuries before Aegon's Landing the maesters were the definitive educational authority and even now centuries after, nothing has changed. The grey rats still decide who learns what and when they learn it. There's one in every highborn home, all correspondence passes through them, they are the healers and the councillors.

The circular logic gets even more blockheaded when you factor in the fact that Daenerys is far from the only white character in the books. She is not the only character who wishes for home. She is not the only character who draws strength from her ancestors, her bloodline and her magical creatures. 

Cersei draws strength from her family’s iconography, and the Stark children (Jon included) all draw strength from their direwolves, their home and their blood. Sansa, Arya and Bran wish to return home and their home was built on the indiscriminate murder and displacement of the indigenous peoples. Their home is built on centuries of rape, murder, exclusionary practices and sexual slavery. 

However, if we give the nonsensical argument that time erases crimes air; the Starks, Lannisters and Tullys are warring to settle personal grievances in the present timeline. As a consequence of that war, thousands (a modest guesstimate) of small folk, minor nobles and even some major ones have been raped, tortured, maimed and killed.

Despite all this, no one writes meta after meta about how Sansa and her siblings must surely die for justice to be had for those who sing the song of the earth, the free folk, the giants and all the old races that fled beyond the wall.  

People write meta about Cersei and how she must die, but those are typically more misogynistic nature. They typically argue that she must die not for the “crime” of being Lannister, but for the “crime” of being Cersei and “ruining” Jamie. 

I would not mind criticisms of Dany and her peace-focused approach to ending slavery because the approach is naïve and she gives the slavers far too much ground. However, she is learning, growing and self-critiquing. At the end of A Dance with Dragons, she has decided to embrace fire and blood, her knight is breaking the false peace which is a necessary step forward.

What I find offensive is people saying that she should have planned better before she abolished slavery. And that the death, violence, and sickness that arises from her quest to eradicate slavery is somehow worse than the death, violence, and sickness that already existed in Slaver’s Bay. 

This argument often downplays the horrific conditions and suffering that exist(ed) under the slave system in Slaver's Bay. Such arguments are often in poor taste and prioritise the lives and comforts of the slavers more than the people they have enslaved.

I would not mind criticisms of Dany if people applied that same critique even-handedly. The same people who believe that Jon and Bran have done much to rectify the evil that their ancestors perpetuated believe that Dany has not done anything to right the wrongs of her ethnic kin. They praise them for the non-existent steps that they have taken, but in the same breath, they condemn Dany for not being able to immediately end the plague that is slavery. 

It is perfectly alright to not like fictional characters, no law requires you to like certain fictional characters over others. However, what is not right is making broad accusations about those who do, it is beyond the pale. It is disgusting, and annoying, and trivialises real-world issues to score cheap points against fictional characters.

Equating the survival of a teenage survivor to the restoration of a fascist house or neo-Nazi power fantasy when such designations do not exist in the world of ice and fire is strange behaviour. Saying that the teenage survivor will eventually be manipulated and raped (again) before ending up dead on her manipulator's blade is also strange behaviour. 

Dismissing the horrors of colonialism, especially when the text shows you that the involved parties are still affected by it, is not normal and often veers into real-world imperialism apologia. While criticism and analysis of characters and their actions are valid and even encouraged, it is essential that we do not resort to sweeping generalisations about other people and that we keep criticisms of characters grounded in the text. 

[1]  

Ooooooh, I am the last of the giants, my people are gone from the earth.

The last of the great mountain giants, who ruled all the world at my birth

Oh, the smallfolk have stolen my forests, they’ve stolen my rivers and hills.

And they’ve built a great wall through my valleys, and fished all the fish from my rills

In stone halls they burn their great fires, in stone halls they forge their sharp spears.

Whilst I walk alone in the mountains, with no true companion but tears.

They hunt me with dogs in the daylight, they hunt me with torches by night.

For these men who are small can never stand tall, whilst giants still walk in the light.

Oooooooh, I am the LAST of the giants, so learn well the words of my song.

For when I am gone the singing will fade, and the silence shall last long and long.

[chiropteracupola]

[lying on the floor eating my phone] does anyone. does anyone want to suggest me some people to put in my silly little pokeverse.

[outlying-hyppocrate]

well. did you fucking miss me.

[wonder-worker]

"[Elizabeth Woodville's] piety as queen seems to have been broadly conventional for a fifteenth-century royal, encompassing pilgrimages, membership of various fraternities, a particular devotion to her name saint, notable generosity to the Carthusians, and the foundation of a chantry at Westminster after her son was born there. ['On other occasions she supported planned religious foundations in London, […] made generous gifts to Eton College, and petitioned the pope to extend the circumstances in which indulgences could be acquired by observing the feast of the Visitation']. One possible indicator of a more personal, and more sophisticated, thread in her piety is a book of Hours of the Guardian Angel which Sutton and Visser-Fuchs have argued was commissioned for her, very possibly at her request."

-J.L. Laynesmith, "Elizabeth Woodville: The Knight's Widow", "Later Plantagenet and Wars of the Roses Consorts: Power, Influence, Dynasty"

[icewindandboringhorror]

sometimes looking at like Self Help Strategies lists for the symptoms I'm having is always just like:

thing that I already do

thing I have tried 10 times

thing I already do

thing that I don't have the money to do

thing I already do

thing I've been doing since I was 10yrs old to no avail

thing that is impossible given my situation

thing that doesn't apply to me

thing that I already do

thing I have already tried

hrmm, oh wait, maybe finally- OH, yeah.. okay. thing that I already do but it was just phrased slightly differently

thing I have already done

[swordheld]

how do you think in poems? i really enjoy the tags under your posts i've always wanted to write down my own thoughts that way bc in my head they feel so thorough and magical but whenever i put it in words i feel it just gets so much flatter and i no longer see a point and give up

oh oh oh, but lovely, can't you see that you've already started? it's a perspective that you hone, over time, something that is specific to you and you alone – that's the piece of it that makes it so special! you've already begun, and it only goes forward, up, sideways from here, wherever you wish to go!

think of it like a skill, for a moment, or a kind of muscle, if you'd prefer. you have to work at it, with it, over time and differing experiences, in order to progress.

(a quick important note: not progression as in the kind of quality-check of a grading scale, but progression as in evolution. shifting change. think of the leaves and their colors across the months of autumn, or temperatures rising with the sun and cooling with the evening dark. change isn't intrinsically a qualifying thing, it can just be, sometimes. this is difficult to remember, especially in the midst of frustration, but it is worth it. you are always doing better than you think you are – harshest critic, and all that.)

which is not to say that it's a simple thing to do! compare this to the vibe of me picking up crochet recently, with my shaking hands and too-quickly dwindling adhd focus – my first attempts at making a lil headphone sprout have not been going as well as i once hoped. my stitches are either too big and sloppy bc i'm not holding the yarn tightly enough to get clean ones, or i feel frustrated due to it not looking like how i'd like it to look in my mind when i started it, or even as i begin my umpteenth attempt.

but!! i know that it won't ever look the way i want it do if i set it down and never keep trying. it'll take awhile, like everything does, even the seasons take their time, the moon and its phases; but what i do know, is that, eventually, it'll resemble something i want it to. vaguely, maybe, but it is something. it doesn't have to look exactly like the guide i'm following, or the examples i'm inspired by, because it's mine – something made by my own hands, my own time and experience with every mistake and thrilling joy along the way to learn by.

take it from me: i want to be good at things i want to be good at so badly. and that excitement makes me want to be at the skill level i need to be at in order to do so right then and there, no learning curves or building blocks allowed. which is never how it happens, unfortunately, but –

i think, gently, that we tend to overlook what a pleasure it is to learn. to see the slow progression of things, to begin and change and continue and get better. and even if it's different as we go along, in a way it's our own little kind of magic, maybe, to create and never be done if we don't want to be.

which is all to say: it's already yours. why does it have to be anything else, anything more? why can't it just be good as it is now, where it might never be again? what is there to lose by enjoying the moment of where you are?

like everything, it will grow and shift and evolve with time, maybe into something you'd hoped for, or maybe into something you don't even have the words to describe right now at all. but that's the fun of it: how even now, even then, there, across time and distance and skill, there is a common thread of things; it will always come from your heart, your experience, where you are right then and there and now.

and if you think of that like magic, well, it becomes a little like magic, doesn't it?

also, something to consider: sometimes things you feel or think can't be put into words at that moment, or even at all! something else you could try (that i certainly do) is making something else with whatever it makes you feel - whether that's another form of art, or any other kind of media. if it makes you want to go outside and take a walk or get cozy and read or play a video game? that counts too! that's still an experience, you're still feeling.

i think that counts a little more than anything else, you know?

and as a little ending fun side-note, can i share something cool? i've never thought of it that way before, as thinking in poems. in my mind it's always been a kind of perspective of personal wonder, but you're right – it's poetry, in it's own way. you gave me that – so thank you, from the heart of me. i hope your journey finds you with every bright joy.

[moderndaypandora]

Got tagged by @notallsandmen for a WIP paragraph game, and I’m incredibly flattered, considering ... this doesn’t feel on the level of fic, this is fun little sketches of dialogue at most. But this is what I had, so here’s more of the mortal dreamling silliness (previous bits: modern day mortal dreamling and newlyweds with ravens)

How Hob asked Johanna to be his witness for his wedding:

He texted her asking if she was free that afternoon, because he needed her for something.  Historically "something" has meant anything from "taste-testing 3 different scone recipe variations to figure out the best one" to "hustling drunk pricks at darts". Likewise, Hob has done her favors ranging from picking up tampons to providing an alibi. In theory there is a ledger of favors owed, but in reality there will never be a balancing of books (because they're best friends, even if Johanna is too prickly to admit it and Hob is too smart to).

Johanna texted back "yeah, what's up?", and practically broke a land speed record pressing "Call" when she got the response.

Johanna: what the fuck kind of text exchange is confirming I'm around and then sending "getting married today, hello, witness!" and a selfie of you and some goth twink?

Hob: it felt pretty self-explanatory

Johanna: last I'd checked, you weren't even seeing anybody!

Hob: things change?

Johanna: I got dinner with you 5 weeks ago, you bastard, and you were single then.

Hob: ... things change fast?

Johanna: how the fuck did you even meet him?

Hob: I was running back from class during that awful rainstorm last month, and he was just outside my tube station.

Johanna: Hob.

Hob: His umbrella'd broken and he was soaking wet, and he looked absolutely miserable, poor darling.

Johanna: ...

Hob: So I offered him towels and dry clothes, since my flat was just up the road. And by the time the rain stopped I knew I wanted to marry him, and he said yes.

Johanna: what lunatic just follows strange men home?

Hob: he was pretty suspicious until I gave him my phone so he could text my address to his sister.

Johanna: and she was somehow fine with it, like 'yeah, go on'?


Hob:

Hob: he got a bit distracted by my phone background and never actually texted her.

Johanna: the fuck

Hob: you know Julian of Norwich is gorgeous

Johanna: your cat is a lesser demon escaped from hell. I'm going to exorcise your cat someday

Hob: Jules is a sweetheart. She doesn't even hunt birds!

Johanna: That thing won't kill any of the bloody birds in your neighborhood because she's saving all her energy to someday murder me and you know it.

Hob: ... undeserved paranoia about my extremely photogenic cat aside --

Johanna: WELL-deserved!

Hob: --will you be my witness?

Johanna: Left it a bit late, if you're asking me today. Did everybody else say no?

Hob: Didn't ask anybody else. Been planning to ask you since Dream said yes, but I figured if I gave you too much notice you'd flee the country.

Johanna: [tearing up, because even if you're an independent badass, it's nice to hear you're somebody's person] you're fucking right I would.

(Johanna's custom ringtone on Hob's phone is from Sweeney Todd, the final verse in Johanna where you can hear the body drop ("Wake up, Johanna, another bright red day"), because Hob and Johanna are black-hearted bastards/absolutely in cahoots with each other and think it’s funny. Hob's ringtone is Being Alive from Company ("Somebody need me too much...").  Sondheim all the way, motherfuckers)

[worstloki]

sigyn that married loki like ages ago so when it comes out he's jotun she's like. 'well it's a bit late to do anything about that'

[quietwingsinthesky]

the last unicorn post from earlier has me thinking about the master. that yana is still in there, you know? is still someone he was, if even for a brief flash across the life of a time lord. there’s no way to unlive that life. there are ways to twist it later, sure, to make utopia into hell on earth. but the life was lived. in much the same way that the doctor can remember, can feel, the love he held onto as john smith even as that life is ripped out of his hands. the doctor choose denial and then grief and then to shutter it all away. and so john smith died, and so professor yana died, and the doctor and the master live on. the doctor has done this before, and he lives in orbit around humanity, trying to keep the best parts of them and hold them deep enough to take root (which he can pretend he gets to choose, as a time lord. as a human, it all floods in and can’t be dug back out.) but what about the master, right?

to borrow a turn of phrase: i think there are two time lords left in the universe, and they both learned how to regret.

[waywardsalt]

with my phantom hourglass replay, there are two things i noticed;

a possible theme you could glean from the game is action vs inaction, and i think it's especially prevalent before you even leave mercay the first time, with oshus frequently urging link to not go after the ghost ship, then to just wait until the broken bridge is fixed, and seems reluctant at every turn while link and ciela are more than eager to go and do something about this problem, and the people of mercay in general talking about things and their problems but never seeming to act on their fears or desires, as well as the mention that due to the ghost ship, very very few people are still sailing around, while linebeck is one of the only people we see in the game actively going after the ghost ship and still sailing around. i might make a longer post just talking more about the action vs inaction in phantom hourglass but i just noticed it a bit and thought it was a bit of an interesting sort of theme you could find in the game.

linebeck moves so fucking much. i think he moves more than any npc in the rest of the game. not just in his intro cutscene where he is very animated, just in how much he moves when just standing in his little idle post, it's damn near distracting when the camera is focused on him, he moves a lot. i don't think i've really acknowledged how much he moves, and it really gives the impression that he's antsy or eager to get going, both of which fit him pretty well with how he acts.