vulpinmusings

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there’s been a really bizarre trend in the past couple years of TERFS/radfems getting pissed off about biology posts. posts about the bilateral gyandromorph cardinal (one half male, one half female), posts about older hens beginning to crow and act like roosters, posts about animals being animals. and it’s hilarious because they interpret these posts as some kind of agenda. no! these are animals not choosing any gender identity or sexuality but being born into bodies they have no control over. weird how that happens in nature huh

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I've been thinking of the "Can Granny Weatherwax beat Bugs Bunny" question and this is my full take for Discworld characters:

Vimes - Cares too much, too easy to piss off. Has the innate chase instinct that makes characters run into walls with realistic tunnels painted on them. Might get to arrest Bugs Bunny but the beast will just slip out of the handcuffs to help him lock them, then walk out of the jail cell to have a union mandated coffee break.

Ridcully - Classic hunting season scenario, but has enough charisma to probably still get a few good shots off before the inevitable.

Rest of the wizards - No survivors, only Bugs.

Carrot - The intense near-magical narrative aura of well meaning innocence should make him immune, Bugs will likely be forced to be the villain of the episode.

Lord Vetinari - Flattened by a comically large anvil in the first few minutes of the episode, unclear if it was all a part of his long term strategy or not.

Moist - Has the 'lovable trickster getting away with it' energy, but nowhere near Bugs level. Already fell for the "old lady who swallowed a fly" scenario with the stamp slugs once, won't fare any better here.

Death - Definitely one of those "character is trying to avoid death" episodes, would go back and forth. Might actually get to end Bugs but his spirit will reappear in Death's domain and ruin his garden.

Nanny Ogg - The ultimate in anti-Bugs technology, a gleefully annoying old lady who doesn't give a fuck and definitely won't be the first to instigate the plot bearing conflict. This is a full sweep, he's the episode antagonist.

Granny Weatherwax - Too win-motivated to not lose. Would have to break the story to have any chance. Might do it.

Magrat - Will have sappy ideas about helping the poor animal which honestly has the 50:50 chance of either getting slapsticked or Bugs ending in a ye olde stroller&pacifier gag.

Colon&Nobby - Designed in a lab to be totaled by Bugs Bunny.

Tiffany Aching - A child that also has a large pan that is the perfect thing to hit someone over the head with and make a BOIOIOINGGG sound, so great odds.

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This is doubly annoying because I finally came up with a new deck, and RNG won't give me the space to properly test its balance.

To note, the deck has the auto-fill number of lands for a 60-card Standard deck, I've only gone a few cards over 60, and I swapped a few basic lands for dual-colors while keeping the ratio the same.

Today's Land-draw RNG is one of two things:

Plenty, but all of a single color, which DOESN'T match most of my spells OR

Three lands total.

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Today's Land-draw RNG is one of two things:

Plenty, but all of a single color, which DOESN'T match most of my spells OR

Three lands total.

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If you're a Youtube creator with monetization privileges, click on the "Earn" tab right now and deal with this if you feel like its necessary. Youtube is going to start running more ads on your videos automatically without your permission, and the ability to opt out will go away in two months.

Youtube is not advertising this anywhere. Checking my "Earn" tab on my own is the first time I'm hearing about it. To me, that suggests they don't want people to know they're doing this, because they want to crank up ad frequency and make more money.

If you've ever seen what happens when you let Youtube automatically pick ad slots like this, they basically try to run an ad every 2-3 minutes. It's a nightmare.

They are going to flood their platform with ads and drive away 70% of their viewership. On the other hand, if you opt out and choose to continue showing fewer ads, you may earn the trust and respect of your viewers.

You have a strategic operative to turn this off before May 12th. If you don't do it before then, it sounds like Youtube will take away your ability to reduce your ad frequency.

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Poking my nose back into MTG Arena may have been a mistake. I have a story to write and other productive things to do, but now there's the siren call of trying to beat FF heroes with woodland beasties...

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Poked my nose into MTG Arena tonight to see how my old Bloomburrow mains stand up to the Final Fantasy set and whatever else has cycled in since Duskmourne.

Given that the FF meta is probably still in development, I was able to hold my own when RNG favored me with a proper land to spell ratio. In those cases, if I didn't win I at least made my opponent work for their victory.

Lao, wound up getting beat by my own favorite Heartfire Hero strategy. Nice to see others using it.

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help

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Deltarune Chapter 5 is gonna open with both Susie and Kris trying to act normal and enjoy the festival for Noelle's sake, only to be weighed down by their respective troubled thoughts.

It's going to be a bittersweet comedy.

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So, at the end of Chapter 3...

...when Susie uncovers the lock on the bunker, she finds indicators for three codes.

One is a pine tree, which points to Carol and Dess

One is the Delta Rune itself, which isn't followed up on but possibly refers to the church because the symbol is all over that place.

The last is a police badge. Susie speculates that means Undyne knows that code, yet Napstablook knows nothing about Undyne keeping note of a code in the station.

Plus, if Undyne knew the code, that would mean she's in on the secret already. But, she seemed confused to have stumbled into the TV Dark World.

However, Undyne wasn't always the chief of police. Asgore used to hold that job, before whatever fall from grace led to Toriel divorcing him and him now living on free pickles from Sans and charity cheese plates from Carol.

Asgore knows one of the bunker codes. He's in cahoots with Carol, and Tori is NOT pleased with his part of the arrangement.

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I haven't quite cleared Chapter 4 yet (I'm at what could only be the last normal boss), but I think I've seen enough Deltarune to start ruminating about certain characters.

spoiler tags are on, and read-more coming

As the only Human in a town of Monsters, Kris was already predisposed for a degree of “outsider” status. Their apparent tendency toward flat affect and quietness enhanced that.

Despite their weirdness, they had a solid peer group in the form of Asriel and the Holiday girls. Catti (the goth one) also had a period of bonding with Kris through studying the occult and trying to learn magic.

With their brother and the Holidays, if nowhere else, Kris felt comfortable enough to act on their weird and trollish impulses. This was helped by Noelle actually enjoying being the target of Kris’s many pranks about Humanity’s “gross” traits (human under the bed, blood, tearing out heart…)

Outside the Dreemur/Holiday circle, though, Kris rarely expressed themselves and didn’t participate the sorts of activities that would produce awards or other items to decorate their side of the bedroom.

Still, life was happy.

And then Dess disappeared. Toriel and Asgore divorced. Rudy got sick and Carol got cold. Berdly started monopolizing Noelle’s time to prop up his own grades, and that likely involved insulting Kris as he does in Chapters 1 and 2. Asriel went to college. and thus Kris was stripped of his familiar social circle and withdrew into themselves even more, just going through the motions day-to-day and only acting when prompted by others.

Thus, in Chapter 1 of Deltarune, Kris does almost nothing of their own volition until the end, when they move to guard Susie on their own, and then pull out the Soul in the stinger.

In Chapter 2, having bonded with Susie and Ralsei during the last adventure, they start to put their own spin on certain instructions (particularly anything regarding opinions on their friends, and reacting to Spamton in all his forms)

In Chapter 3, Kris doesn’t get many opportunities to act on their own, but they put flair into some actions during physical challenges, and the choices themselves seem to have more character to them.

In Chapter 4’s first(?) Light World segment, Kris suddenly starts doing all sort of crazy things while hanging out with Susie, and they draw on the diner window of their own volition during that scene (an activity they previously did with Asriel, iirc). Then there’s the whole Kris vs. Soul sequence in the Holiday house, and the apparently brutal smackdown applied if you’re on the Weird route.

So, over the course of just three days being actively puppeted by a Soul, Kris is already starting to get back to their old self.

Kris’s feelings toward the Soul likely vary according to player choice, but given how much they hate being forced through the Weird route and hurting Noelle, I suspect they might be coming to appreciate being made to reach out and socialize, particularly with Susie. So, whatever plans Carol and the Knight may have, Kris might end up choosing to side with the heroes (if they aren’t already thinking that way and the entire conflict over the guitar was about something like preventing us from getting in over our heads with the Shelter too soon)

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Potentially hot take but one of the reasons we need art and music in schools is that, taught correctly, they are ideal avenues for teaching kids how to do something, kinda suck at it, keep going anyways and improve over time.

And THAT is one of the most valuable skill sets a human being can have. THAT is the skill set that unlocks soooooo many others.

A LOT of people I see with anxiety and depression do not have this skill set. To suck at something is a threat. Proof that they are doomed to suck at it forever. And then, often, that either THEY suck forever or the task must be stupid/useless/pointless (whence we get AI art fans who have decided actually making art is pointless and degrading the labor and skills of others is fine because these are useless skills).

Or you get the freeze- the inability to try things in case you fail. The sudden lancing shame and humiliation or hopelessness. The sense that anything you haven't learned by now you can't learn. Which is so heartbreaking and so untrue.

I just hate it.

"What if I write it and it's bad" "what if I draw it and it's bad" "what if I play it and it sounds bad" DOING IT BAD IS HOW YOU LEARN TO DO IT GOOD! You can't skip the process of leaning and the process is FUN if you let it be what it needs to be!

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I had a dream that Discworld got made into an animated series and there was a fuckin beach episode..... Now I can't stop wondering what that would look like because. I mean. Please try to picture lord vetinari suntanning

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What the flock?! such smart names!

Science should let more cartoonists name things. That how we got the thagomizer and the Rube Goldberg machines. Anyways! SHERLOCK CROWMES!!!!!

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25 years ago an unknown Chinese protester stood in front of a tank in defiance of the government. No one knows the identity of the man but he was given the nick name “Tank Man”. This is one of the most iconic photographs of the century.