thezope

[thezope]

every time I mention how many days sober I am I appreciate people congratulating me and telling me to keep up the good work. it is nice. but I also wish that milestones in addiction recovery weren’t still so pinned to length of sobriety/abstinence

yeah yeah I’m 50 days sober who cares. how about the fact that, when I do drink, it tends to be nipped in the bud after two days nowadays instead of weeks or months? how about the fact that drinking has been condensed to a six pack because I’m at the end of my tether, instead of browning out every night? how about my friend who has decided to stop drinking alone, and is actually sticking to that? recovery doesn’t always look like sobriety and I wish it was more normal to talk about that. yknow. when addiction is normal to talk about at all

[thezope]

[thezope]

[thezope]

UNWARRANTED?

[thezope]

This is insane

[thezope]

Replying as a reblog because brevity is the soul of wit and I’m a fool and also because I’m bad a tumblr.

This is a thing that’s been revolving in my head like a rotisserie chicken!

So I think it boils down to two things, mostly. First and foremost, it's not really clear how fledgling training works, necessarily, when it comes to house involvement or Talon involvement. There's SO MANY houses beyond the eight that make up the current, uh, "management". It's stated that houses rise and fall in power, some are very large, some are just a few members big. While it's possible that some houses handle their own recruitment and training from the ground up, it's implied (looking at Jacbous and the dialogue of the two fledglings outside the Casino for example) that the majority of fledglings are trained in a creche/as a cohort and recruited into families after reaching a certain level of skill and experience. Or, in some cases, making their own house.

If you're ambitious, you'll likely want to be trying to gain the attention of a specific house and some Talons may be involved in the later stages of training fledglings who are petitioning to join their houses, but it seems that the bulk of their early training is handled by general Crow-affiliated trainers, not specifically house Talons or even houses themselves.

This is also what makes the Dellamorte family situation so unique, beyond the fact that they're all blood related, which is also not necessarily standard. There's a few lines here and there that emphasize Caterina "took an active role in training" Lucanis and Illario, which wouldn't need to be stated if it's normal for a Talon to be so directly involved in training fledglings.

Secondly, unless you headcannon Viago being much older than he is (novels and game datamined info put him at early/mid 30s) and your Rook as young as possible, Viago absolutely was not the Talon of the de Riva house so even if Talons were/are directly involved in training fledglings, Viago is more of a contemporary of Rook's (if not actively in their cohort depending on Rook's age) than anything else.

A lot of this is taking snippets from the games and novels and running with them, though.

I have to say, while I don't begrudge anyone for it and anyone is absolutely free to have their own headcanons...

I am mighty confused by the vitriol people have for Caterina...And not for Viago? (Or Teia, but she's charming enough to get a pass, Caterina and Viago are both the stoic type, which is why I'm confused about the double standard)

Crow!Rook confirms their training was torture as well in banter, and it is understood that you're Viago's protege and were supervised by him, which gives very similar vibes to Illario and Lucanis being trained by Caterina.

And hell, if anything, he'd know and approve of any torture taking place to train you properly. In fact, I think given how much of an overachiever he is and how big the chip on his shoulder is, a potential Crow!Rook, as his "favorite", would be subjected to even worse kinds of training than regular fledglings.

But that's a headcanon, the fact continues to be, Viago is as much a Talon as Caterina is, and does what he thinks is best for his house, which involves torturing their very young recruits to make sure they are ready for the job they must do, which is not an easy one.

So why is Caterina a framed as a child abuser and Viago everyone's dream parental figure for their Rook? I am powerfully confused about this.

(If you hate Caterina because of her obvious favoritism towards Lucanis, please have a fantastic day and ignore this entire post, cuz you do indeed have a point, but this post is not about that.)

[thezope]

[thezope]

save me characters doing fucked up things out of self-preservation…..characters doing fucked up things out of self-preservation save me………..

[thezope]

I-80 highway through Wyoming. nicknamed The Sisters, for the three sets of hills that create an optical illusion of the road rising into the sky

[thezope]

[thezope]

So many people who get periods are like “Ugh it sucks that having a menstrual cycle makes you almost die every month” like no that’s not normal you need to go to the doctor

[thezope]

YOU hates terfs

[thezope]

Since the whole thing with NaNoWriMo has gone down, I've noticed that one of their former sponsors, Ellipsus, has cut contact with NaNoWriMo because they do not support their stance on AI; I didn't know what Ellipsus was, but upon further research I've found that they are a writing platform that works a lot like Google Docs and Microsoft Word, only with a heavier leaning on the story-writing aspect and connecting with other writers - and they also completely denounce any use of AI, both in the writing process itself and in the use of their platform. I really appreciate that.

Since this is the case (and since I've noticed Google has begun implementing more AI into their software), I've decided to give Ellipsus a try to see if it's a good alternative to Google Docs (my main writing platform). It's completely free and so far, I've found it simple to use (although it is pretty minimal in its features), and I really like the look of it.

I figured I'd spread the word about this platform in case any of you writers would want to give it a try, and if you do, let me know how you like it!

[thezope]

funniest Kamala Harris VP picks go

[thezope]

i’m fucking dying. it’s been brought to ben collins (the rad new owner of the onion’s) attention that Google AI summary is using The Onion headlines, resulting in this:

[thezope]

at my sketchbook. straight up “drawing it”. and by “it”, haha, well. let’s justr say. Nothing

[thezope]