uncleasriel

[uncleasriel]

via @vaguegrant

#he answers to “pee buddy” now as well as his own name#he will dash across the house to make it into the bathroom with you#and then flop just out of reach and scream for pets#or occasionally chase his tail as if he were a kitten#which he only does horizontally in bathrooms#cats#the internet was made for cats

I love when household beasts are like whoa. You were gonna piss all on your own? No backup or companionship or anything? Babe. I got you. I'm right here. You don't have to be alone during this difficult time (pissing), and you won't be. Ever. This is not a discussion.

[uncleasriel]

[uncleasriel]

[uncleasriel]

Cool project by cool people that's absolutely worth supporting!

(you might also see a certain magical poster in the bg 🌟)

[uncleasriel]

[uncleasriel]

[uncleasriel]

[uncleasriel]

[uncleasriel]

Divergent is a bad book, but its accidental brilliance is that it completely mauled the YA dystopian genre by stripping it down to its barest bones for maximum marketability, utterly destroying the chances of YA dystopian literature’s long-term survival 

[uncleasriel]

[uncleasriel]

[uncleasriel]

C A N E N D A R

[uncleasriel]

I really would have liked to have seen that developed a bit too.

Being a vampire is kinda odd in this game. It's less "people with a dangerous thirst" and more "ethnicity that's unfairly demonized" which feels....TBH, a bit of a let down. Vampires have such a strong cultural cachet in romance fiction - why is it that the character who IS a vampire has this as an informed attribute (super strength aside) while the Saint Germain (a non-vampire) has a romance that feels the most like a Vampire Romance?!

Seeing Impey get into this would be intriguing. He's kinda divorced from his culture - he's preoccupied with Science and Engineering and The New, things which vampire culture seems less interested in (if his home village was any reflection on that). Having that be in tension with his heritage - he loves the new, rejects Vampire customs, etc - would be a great contrast with Delacroix/Van Helsing, but could have also helped him bond with Cardia. After all, she feels disconnected from the culture around her, and is a New kind of being disconnected from traditional institutions like family, schooling, church, etc... but couldn't Impey also bond with that? Being detached from the world means everything is new for you, and that's a gift to make each day an adventure!

I do wish there was something about vampires that did make them dangerous - they can drink blood, or have a rare disease or disorder that can make them have bloodlust - and Impey can get to shine even more because his pacifism would mean he could never fall for that! It does seem like it could fall into the Justified Fantasy Racism trope ("Oh course the British were justified in persecuting the Irish vampires because they're inherently irrational,violent, uncivilizable,etc") but I don't think its an inherent trap of exploring that path either!

Maybe make it that vampires can get a taste for blood, and it does give them a bit of a bad habit, but it's looked on like alcoholism among vampires - you might enjoy a nip of vitae, almost no-one over-indulges. (Turn this into a sterotype like the Irish Drunk to further highlight the distinction between folks' lived realities and ugly sterotypes). Of course, this could then pivot into fun stuff - Impey acts like he's had a dark secret - he drank someone's blood once!And then it turns out he did something like put someone's cut into his mouth to keep the wound clean when he was a kid, and he thought te tast was gross, and he got chewed out for doing something awkward, and he's been afraid ever since that folks would freak out over him having once drank blood! It's a comedy bit that seems to fit him well!

I do think Vampires in Code;Realize are a little half-baked, and are a weaker element of what's otherwise a cracking good steampunk fantasy. It would be nice to see what be done with them beyond the Count Renfield as their defender in the House of Lords... but I think that subplot could have taken over an already complex story as-is!

Still, I wish we could tease it out, as you say

Is it spoilers if the game has been out for like a decade? Well, I’ll just put it below the thingy.

So, we know how Impey is a vampire. But, why didn’t they do more with that? It’s basically like a “yeah, he’s a vampire… anyway!” But DO something with that. It doesn’t need to be a big plot thing, but don’t just drop that and move on like you’re talking about what you had for breakfast. It’s so easy to forget about it. I want more about Vampire Impey!

[uncleasriel]

Yeah, it did veer into an inhuman territory. I chalked it up to being, you know, one of the oldest humans on the planet and having a very narrow conception of what Humanity's Path was supposed to be which justifies everything.

That is to say, a religious ideal of Devotion to God's Intent that crossed over into some esoteric wisdom a-la al-Khidur, which (because it was Divinely Mandated Insight) gave license to do some downright immoral things because It's Part Of God's Plan (See: the story of Moses, al-Khidur and the disobedient child). A prophet or mystic that close to the Divine is not going to function on a human level of morality, because to know the Divine in many mystic traditions is to know madness. The idea of God as a loving and compassionate being is a modern theological innovation. Pre-Christian conceptions of the Divine hold that God created a specific order (like a King deciding a Code of Law), and such a deity was well withing their rights to declare a being like Cardia as inherently an affront to Their creation.

Is this a horrifying idea? Absolutely. I'm certainly on the side of Saint Germain in defying Omnibus and her schemes because this is utilitarian cruelty - Cardia has no desire to enable her father's schemes, and between her and her harem of omnicompetent boyfriends, they'd certainly be able to oppose Beckford's plan for project Code:Realize. It's cruel and relies on a utilitarian view of humanity that should be more preoccupied with the industrial revolution, or democracy, or other social forces that tend to buck the trend of pre-modern societal structures.

But, from the Doylist perspective, Omnibus serves to make the plot go as a scary antagonist that can rival people as well connected and competent as the inhabitant's of Saint-Germain's manor, and makes the stakes feel suitably scary for when the final route is unlocked for Lupin. Gotta have something that can rival ultra-rich unkillable super-worldly-assassin like Saint Germain....might as well make it a spymaster who can command up to 12 more folks just like him!

I forgot how much I just hate Omnibus.

She just gives off bad vibes. I don’t like when she’s on the screen. She has this “I’m better than you so listen to me. You are just a child and I know best.”

Plus her entire “This person has the potential to kill thousands so we should kill them now.” Lady, you lived for thousands of years. You should know that there are alternate paths. The person has the POTENTIAL to do it - why don’t you, I don’t know, help instead of sitting on your high horse? Why is her first instinct to kill a person, who at that point is innocent?

[uncleasriel]

Holy fuck it's real

Devil Eyes was a secret psychological warfare program in 2005–2006 by the United States Central Intelligence Agency to develop an Osama bin Laden action figure and distribute it in South Asia. The CIA worked in conjunction with toymaker Donald Levine, a former Hasbro executive who has been credited as the “father” of G.I. Joe toys.[1] Levine designed a twelve-inch lifelike figure of bin Laden whose face was painted with a material that, when heated, would peel off to reveal a demon-like visage with red skin, green eyes, and black markings. The goal of the program was to scare children and their parents in an effort to turn public opinion against the real bin Laden.[2]

In 2014 the CIA acknowledged the existence of the program but said it had been discontinued after Levine had produced only three prototype figurines. According to The Washington Post, however, an anonymous source with “direct knowledge of the project” said that hundreds of the toys were created and shipped to Karachi, Pakistan in 2006.[2]

[uncleasriel]

[uncleasriel]

PHANTOM SUMMONED is a collaborative Dark Souls 2 art zine focusing on the game's many memorable NPC phantom summons. What they lack in dialogue and backstory, they make up for in making our journey through Drangleic just a little bit less lonely. Contains 20 pages of black and white illustrations from 8 participating artists, a must have for all the ds2 loreheads out there!

AVAILABLE TO DOWNLOAD for the low low price of FREE! Please consider checking it out and giving the artists a follow as well!!!