#which honestly! makes it fucking worse!!

[humlors]

Insane how a woman at work today, seeing me visibly stressed almost to the point of having shaky hands, just smiles at me going "well, this will just make you more resilient to stress further on in your work life! It's good to build up!"

Like ma'am. Is it really that fucking hard to actually treat me like a human being, NOT stress me out and probably get better service. The whole 'the younger generation has it too easy' attitude really shouldn't mean that you can just on purpose stress us out because you've imagined that it's "good for us"

[froschli96]

You know what, fuck it, I have to speak my truth! (this is gonna be a rant, so anyone who actually likes assassin's creed revelations and/or the secret crusade, be warned or maybe don't read this at all)

remember how altaïr talks to king richard at the end of ac1, and richard is like "[humans] come into the world kicking and screaming, violent and unstable. it is what we are. we cannot help ourselves."? and how altaïr answers "no. we are what we choose to be." and how that ACTUALLY has meaning bc he himself was "violent and unstable" at the beginning of the game but he has learned and is now CHOOSING to be a better person who cares about others and humanity at large? remember how his calmness and gentleness was something that he ACQUIRED over the course of the story?

and remember how in revelations they then suddenly had a PRE-AC1 altaïr say about the first of his targets "no man should pass from this world without knowing some kindness." and be all wise and calm and collected during a nice little chat with al mualim, who suddenly acts all fatherly? (like, this is suddenly supposed to be a positive relationship? what??)

also, during the confession the target says to altair: "you put too much faith in the hearts of men, altaïr. [...] humans are weak, base, and petty." and altaïr answers: "no. our creed is evidence to the contrary." KJASJFJDKL???? like, it’s almost insulting how close this exchange is to the one with richard. you know, the one that was actually earned after a whole game of character development. like WTF??? cool congrats now that development means nothing. like, apparently that was just altaïr reverting BACK to being the exemplary assassin who understands and believes in the creed that he was apparently just born as. (i also hate how having a young inexperienced altaïr saying this implies that altaïr's faith in humanity is a sign of naivete instead of a sign of the wisdom he has gained after being confronted with counter arguments for a whole game, and also something that distinguishes the assassins from the templars who use humanity's supposed wickedness to justify controlling them like in AC1, but whatever)

altaïr’s development in AC1 mattered BECAUSE he is not NATURALLY a good person, it actually said something about humanity's capacity for both bad AND good and how humans don't have to be forced to be good through mind control bc they can by their own free will choose to be better when taught how and when allowed the freedom to grow. but no. apparently altaïr has just always been calm, wise and gentle. and he just sort of forgot about that during AC1 bc…. ? bc of adha?? bc of abbas???

oh don’t get me started on the whole abbas thing. (it doesnt even make sense that abbas is so hung up about his father and "his family’s honor", like what about the whole point of al mualim not allowing parents to be close to their children bc it would make them weak? like, my dude, you’re not supposed to HAVE any family aside from the brotherhood)

they used the throwaway character that had like 5 lines and made him into altaïr’s main antagonist in revelations… like, abbas wasn’t supposed to be this ONE dude who had personal beef with altaïr, he was just supposed to show how while altaïr’s revered by many, a lot of his brothers also hate him, bc 1) altaïr is a shitty person at this point and 2) bc there’s no real feeling of community and family in this version of the brotherhood, but just a pervasive sense of competition and jealousy — these assassins don’t care about their goal of safeguarding humanity bc they’re too hung up on petty squabbles and divided by rivalries (you know, the things that made malik hate altaïr even before solomon’s temple and that he overcomes in the end which enables him to forgive and to reconcile with altaïr so they can work together and stop al mualim? (you ever just think about "we are one. as we share the glory of our victories, so too should we share the pain of our defeat. in this way we grow closer. we grow stronger." and cry? bc i do. all the time. malik, the man that you are))

and now abbas is altaïr’s childhood best friend turned lifelong enemy?? like, bowden bent over backwards to come up with an explanation for why altaïr is an arrogant ass at the beginning of AC1, when the explanation is right there: he was raised to kill without asking questions and was constantly praised for how good he is at murder, which resulted in him becoming arrogant and disregarding human life. like, it doesn’t have to be some shakespearean family feud type shit. and guess what, this "simple" explanation actually plays into the story’s themes, who’da thunk!

(like, abbas might not have been a "fleshed out" character in AC1, but he had a specific function and now that function is gone. mr bowden, mr mcdevitt, you know characters are allowed to simply exist to tell us something about their worlds and the systems they live in and sometimes that’s more important and also more interesting than having every single character have a detailed backstory to explain all their behaviors, right?)

with all of this revelations loses all nuance in regards to the levantine brotherhood and also the creed in general. like, altaïr being a master assassin at the beginning despite being a terrible person and not actually understanding the creed is a criticism of the brotherhood and the creed itself. like, it said something about the order that someone like altaïr was able to get that high in rank, simply bc he's good at killing, which also tells us what is considered important in the al mualim era assassin order. when you make altaïr’s arrogance the result of his personal conflicts instead of how we was raised by a brotherhood that only valued one's ability to kill, you lose that characterization of the assassin order itself!

and by suddenly making al mualim a semi good "father figure" you also downplay his manipulation of not only altaïr but all those under his care. (altaïr says something about al mualim being "as a father" to him exactly twice in the codex, but he doesn’t mean by that that he WAS a father to him, what he means is that he was the CLOSEST THING he had bc HE DID NOT HAVE PARENTS, not because his mother died in childbirth and his father was executed when he was young btw, BUT BECAUSE IT WASN’T ALLOWED, like his parents actually lived but weren’t allowed to be close to him, he says he came to view al mualim’s "weak and dishonest" love as enough and even better BECAUSE HE HAD NOTHING ELSE, BECAUSE AL MUALIM ISOLATED HIS ASSASSINS FROM THEIR FAMILIES. al mualim "loved" him bc he was good at killing people for him! hm, i wonder if this could be trying to say anything about cults and indoctrination and the inherent contradiction in fighting for peace and free will by taking children away from their parents and raising them to become killers?? like, altaïr wasn't ~the special orphan boy~ taken in by al mualim bc his father died a hero's death, it was "the way of the order" to have al mualim be the closest thing to a parental figure for everyone to ensure absolute loyalty! altaïr saying al mualim was like his father is not supposed to make you go "oh, he must have actually been a good guy for altaïr to consider him a father", it should make you go "oh that's kinda fucked up that he considers the dude who made him into a killing machine and who manipulated him a sort of father figure"!)

and then in revelations they suddenly portray that relationship as positive and healthy??? like, it would be one thing to give it some nuance by delving into the psychology behind al mualim’s "love" and maybe showing how al mualim did care about altair in a complicated, fraught sort of way (like, you know, there’s a lot of interesting things you could say about al mualim at several points addressing altaïr as "my child" in AC1 and how that parallels Garnier referring to the people he drugged and abused as his "children", and what that says about how the templars view the people who they say they want to save and in whose best interests they supposedly act (in any case, al mualim doesn’t use that phrase because he has any real parental feelings but rather to patronize and to invalidate any objections, like in a "mother knows best" way))

but they even fucking DARE to parallel that relationship with that of altaïr and darim in revelations, by having the reflection in the puddle of darim hugging altaïr showing altaïr hugging al mualim…. like their relationship wasn’t inherently abusive but just tragically cut short because al mualim was just "corrupted by the apple"… like WHAT???? so it’s not the very real problems like grooming, manipulation and indoctrination and the hierarchical structure of the brotherhood itself (all of which are antithetical to the assassin ideology), it was just the evil apple all along. great. that’s DEFINITELY a lot more interesting.

god im sorry i really dont want to spread negativity but this is driving me INSANE. like, somebody please tell me im not crazy bc i feel like somehow most of the fandom is in agreement that revelations and the secret crusade have better storytelling and characterization than ac1.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, can we talk about how, even IF we completely ignore AC1 and treat revelations altaïr as his own character…. the narrative still doesn’t really work?

basically, the whole point of his story in rev is that "he gave his whole life to the brotherhood", this obsession led to him not using his time with his family which has him ending up dying alone in a dark library and this in turn makes ezio reevaluate his life choices…. except. he doesn’t? neglect? his family? or whatever? like, his devotion to the assassins is sort of painted as this tragic flaw that leads to a lonely death bc it supposedly comes at the cost of his family, but… his wife has joined the assassins, (at least) one of his sons is in the brotherhood and even when he goes to protect the assassins against the mongols, he takes his family with him (except for the son who stays behind bc he has a family of his own and who, ironically, ends up dying bc of that)… like, you can’t describe altaïr as a good husband and father in the database and have his son tell him that "everything that is good in me began with you, father" when they say goodbye, and then want to make us believe that he put his family behind the brotherhood and that that is a character flaw that leads to his tragedy.

because you HAVE to have a character’s tragedy be the result of a character flaw. like. that is how tragedies work. otherwise it just becomes tragedy for the sake of tragedy which is… boring bc it has no purpose. and we know it is SUPPOSED to have purpose bc ezIO FUCKING QUITS BEING AN ASSASSIN AFTER WITNESSING IT!

it’s like they want to have their cake and eat it, too — they didn’t want to actually make altaïr a bad husband/father, but still wanted to make his life a tragedy where he loses his family which is why instead they outsource all responsibility to abbas who now has to be the reason for ALL the deaths.

like, they try to make at least maria’s death kind of sort of the result of altaïr’s rashness or whatever but like… these guys KILLED THEIR SON and TOLD HIM THAT ALTAÏR HAD ORDERED HIS DEATH. like, altaïr losing it in response to that is not rash, it’s fucking logical and justified! if anything the scene made me angry at maria for trying to stop him. like, GIRL, he was YOUR son too??? but god forbid we give female characters actual real emotions, she has to fill the role of "voice of reason who dies for altaïr’s man pain" i fucking guess.

like, it’s this weird mix where his tragedy is simultaneously painted as his own fault but also not really bc abbas is the one responsible for all the shit that happens. it just… it just doesn’t really go together.

the only way to make his story make sense narratively and to give it actual purpose is by looking at it in the context of ezio’s story, bc the things he sees in altaïr’s memories are supposed to be a revelation (ha!) to ezio specifically. and i guess that’s maybe the crux of it all — altaïr’s story in revelations was conceived of first and foremost to support ezio’s story and development. which is probably also why many people maybe don’t notice bc, having skipped ac1 and started with ac2, the majority of people mostly care only about ezio and only really appreciate altaïr’s story in as far as it serves to push ezio forward. (tho i’ve also seen a few people say that ezio is also written kind of weird in rev, but i’ve never really been an ezio girly myself so i can’t speak to the truth of that)

like, altaïr dying alone in the library doesn’t really have to make sense for his character, i guess, bc it’s only really supposed to be a cautionary tale for ezio.

so, i guess, for once, they actually had a MAN dying for another man’s character development, which is pretty woke actually. ubisoft, i take everything back jksdsfjhgdsahfhsdhfghfdsgjhsdgjh

[mantisgodsdomain]

More notes for Roach conlanging. Roach has grammatical gender, in which only Male, Female, and Object are grammatical genders, whereas Worker uses feminine grammar, Queen and King use a slight variant on feminine grammar, and Drone, and Queen-Alate use masculine grammar. This is because King is derived from Queen, due to their similar positions in a colony, and Queen-Alate is derived from Drone, as both are forms of alate.

Queen is an alteration of feminine grammar that functionally just adds a handful of extra syllables to it, and King is an offsprout of Queen that uses the same grammar with different pronouns. Queen-Alate, despite the name, is derived from Drone, as they are both for referring to different types of alate ant.

Most Roach dialects are intelligible to speakers of Snakemouth Den Cordyceps Roach, but Snakemouth Den Cordyceps Roach is not entirely intelligable to speakers of Roach dialects due to a mix of the excessively specialized vocabulary caused by the specific needs of its speakers, the fact that its speakers do not necessarily have Roach mouthparts and thus may not pronounce syllables in a similar way, and due to the fact that Inanimate Object is a full grammatical gender that does not exist in any other dialect of roach and replaces a decent chunk of terminology for things that previously had Other Words For Them.

[vvienne]

I literally woke up in the middle of the night like God will dark rise is so fucking screwed. The line that’s like. “Everyone wanted to kill the Dark King.” What’s the part where he looks at Violet helplessly, haunted, almost pleading for mercy? But of course he reveals nothing of substance to anyone. Elizabeth is too young to understand but the reader knows what “Her relationship with that boy was…unnatural” can mean. Tying him to bedposts? Failing to strangle him? What else? Never not even once seeing beyond a mythological identity Will himself didn’t know he had? What did he think was the reason? That he was just intrinsically hateful? Of course he says nothing. Of course Violet can’t trust him- he’s given her nothing as painfully real as what she’s given him. So he gives her the sword hoping at least he can die at the hands of someone he loved, but even that doesn’t work out - she gives the sword to a Visander still furious at SARCEAN. The pattern continues; no one looks at Will, who vomits when he realizes what’s happened to James, Will who is much of a liar and killer and sneak as Elizabeth accuses but nonetheless wants to be different. Even when he doesn’t remember his own past. There’s no way out for him that doesn’t hurt. Hope this obsession passes soon given the one and a half years of waiting required for book 3

[revehae]

we need to kill everyone at sm entertainment

[citizenerased77]

he is who i fear lurks underneath my bed

[theprinceandthewitch]

Honestly, I'm never really going to get over how the writers use Luz lying to her literal girlfriend as plot convenience. They really think that little hug at the end of Eclipse Lake fixes Amity's insecurities surrounding her relationship with Luz. Even though Luz shows her time and time again that she doesn't trust her enough to be honest with how she feels lmao.

[alluralater]

super long rant incoming:

the joegoldbergification is super weird. like please please if you’re obsessed with me to an unhealthy and dangerous degree, just keep it to yourself. just don’t tell me, please. the amount of times someone has gotten like this with me and escalated things when i’ve told them to stop is seriously wild. and like wtf is this about saying how you didn’t want to have parasocial interactions like hello?? is my existence a performance to you? am i content created to be fed and consumed by you? and why WHY would you ever think it’s alright to take my kindness as an avenue to then start talking shit about femmes you had falling outs with?? what do you gain from that? certainly not respect from me and that’s why i called you out repeatedly on that shit. so so fucking weird. do you think you gain my pity or my sympathy?? you’re not a beaten dog so please stop. like oh my god the dog metaphor makes me wanna slam my head into a wall. like as someone who has literally been forced to watch animal cruelty take place, shut the fuck up. shut the hell up. your relationship ended and now you wanna demonize people and rewrite history thinking that if certain people don’t know the full story that they’ll just believe you. legitimately how the fuck and why the fuck would i do that when you position yourself as a blameless victim?? it’s so weird and odd. and on top of aaaaaall of that, to obsessively text me and try to like corral me into a corner and say all of this weird stuff like as if you’re spiraling about me when we’d only texted for three days (two of which i wasn’t even responding to you for) is seriously bonkers. like seriously thank fuck something told me not to sext you because i just know things would have gotten awful. it’s not normal and it’s not okay and it’s not healthy. please stop idolizing me. i’m just a person and i am no more interesting than the next person. your obsession is not my responsibility! to try and manipulate me with the way you talk about your ex is super super weird. like extremely weird. i have a mind of my own?? hello?? i make my own judgments myself and i use intuition for a great deal of that. took me all of five seconds after blocking you to check the femme discord and see that i should have already done so but i haven’t because i’ve been busy with family emergencies for like two months. very uncool. very weird, very strange behavior. not my job, not my problem. i am not all of these weird deified titles you like to call me. i don’t have to be ‘omnipotent’ to know that you are trying to bury her and scream your lungs out into the fucking grave as if she deserves it. god i fucking hate when people do this shit. like can toxic mutuals maybe just instead leave me alone?? ‘why are you mutuals with them if they’re toxic” BECAUSE I DIDNT KNOW AND I HAVENT BEEN ABLE TO BE SOCIAL AND FIND OUT UNTIL NOW. like fuck dude i hate it here sometimes. if you’re just haha obsessed with me, GREAT. but please don’t start dumping all this weird shit about how i *make* you feel when im not doing anything and i’ve stated that im not encouraging anything and ive communicated that’s a you thing. i literally told you to focus on yourself and stop talking shit about her and you just kept doing it. the whole obsessed with me thing can be what it is, at this point it’s so normal irl and on here that i’m too exhausted to try and do it all, but the decision to keep going and keep talking shit about her and demonizing them and making yourself a blameless victim is fucking gross and no i actually won’t just sit there and listen to it in exchange for your attention or some weird shit like that. i find it super super weird your constant asking of me to tell you what i think about you and what i think about ANYTHING and everything about you. what the actual fuck?? and then to be like ‘i want to take accountability’ after i’ve already told you everything you’re doing wrong and locked my boundaries and said how uncomfortable i am?? that’s hilarious. anyways ugh okay that’s it bye

[thisisntreaver]

That quest in fable 2 where sparrow has to go save their child from the same cave where they saw a man simply die of heartbreak because they didn't get to his son before he was turned into a hobbe must fuck with them so bad

[grocerystoreanxiety]

I honestly I think I’m in my adult-age HW rn (can’t say abt like the years before when I wasn’t checking my weight but I was like a teen back then), but fuck, it’s 56.4kg today (bmi 21.5) and idk if my metabolism suddenly just stopped bc it feels like it did. I eat abt 1000-1200kcal and the weight moves nowhere (sometimes under 1000kcal, but I try to keep it above to avoid bingeing & muscle loss). It’s sure not that low of a limit, but honestly like that’s no one’s maintenance calories no matter how short & how little they’d move (and I’m 5”4 and try to at least get the 10k steps a day if nothing else). Yeah gotta be patient, been back at this just like 2 weeks after my stupid dumb month of ”i dont care” and sometimes it takes more time.

But it’s weird bc I was recovered for like a year before relapsing this spring, and even then I didn’t gain to this level, and it was a way longer time of eating than just a month and I was steadily 52-54kg the whole time. (I still dont know tho if I can count it as recovery time when I never rly stopped working out or counting my cals; I was just eating my maintenance calories pretty much, some days a little more, and I think I maybe just got into the orthorexia side for a year)

Also I know metabolism gets worse as you age and ppl say it’s around ur mid-20s but does that rly kick in suddenly in one fucking month???? I doubt it (Could be the stress, like I’m waking up to anxiety attacks etc, so it’s not low levels of that rn, and ik stress does a number on you)

Anyways, this is all to say that I’m fucking getting back to it istg like I feel so bad rn in my body. My fucking shorts I’ve worn just this summer aren’t fitting right like dude that’s insane, how did that happen over the course of like a month. No more of this ’’well im too tired to work out today’’ or ’’a liiittle bit of sugar wont kill me’’ garbage; back to all or nothing babeyyy (bad mindset but works the best for me)

[tothesolarium]

how did my professor recommend me The Color of Outer Space

and I found the whole ass wrong book

its about a farm??? I was reading space travel what did I do

[edwardallenpoe]

Who else is on that Sherlock & Co brainrot?

[kavehater]

Chappel Roan saying she’s sad she’s demisexual and then there’s me being aroace as a whole like don’t you think I’m even more sad 😭

[corvigae]

if anyone's curious how i'm going, due to a triple punch of insomnia, period, and chronic illness i've been awake for over 28 hours, have been too sick and/or in pain to leave bed since around 1 am, and feel like i'm living a waking nightmare ✌️

[wild-at-mind]

Had a really stupid conversation via minor emotional breakdown with a queer friend about what makes an LGBTQ person 'assimilist'. From what she said I'm kind of forced to draw the conclusion 'if you say you're not assimilist, then you're not'.

[aquateenpatrolsomethingshowshow]

i fucking love this image sm

AND EUSTACE IN THE BACK IS FUCKING SENDING ME 💀💀💀