yickle-twees

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was hired by a local bakery, said they liked my can-dough attitude

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One of these days I need to write an actual essay-style meta on how much Outer Wilds is a game about grief. It's not just that it depicts a lot of loss - it intentionally tells such a wide range of stories about how people and communities handle a loss, in all the different forms that can take, and all the different consequences that can have.

There's the Nomai, losing contact with the rest of their culture and each other, and coping with their loneliness and mourning in the little out-of-the-way journal entries and big scientific projects alike we see in their texts.

There's the Hearthian village grieving Feldspar, and the range of ways we see them and their disappearance talked about: a temporary setback, a death, an ascent into legend, or just the empty, missing space where a friend used to be.

There's the devastation of the owlks, compelled to bet the existence and comfort of their very home on an objective that later betrayed them, and reacting in anger and abject sorrow once they realized what they'd done, and in fear of the somehow even greater loss the Eye promised.

There's Gabbro, aware of the loops and the supernova and maintaining a calm that often rides the line between peace and forced apathy - because there's just nothing they can do to stop it, and on some level they already know that, and have either grieved it already, or are deciding simply to avoid that grief indefinitely.

And then, of course, there's the hatchling. Faced with the slow unfolding of final, utter loss, at the very beginning of their career. I will never get over that, how much grief was forced into their young brain to be processed, how much they had to come to terms with something no one is supposed to be able to handle, even if they have infinite time and space to do it.

Outer Wilds takes all this grief, and paints it on a backdrop of spinning planets and glittering distant supernovae. It never shies away from the reality of how bleak and heavy it all is, but it leans so much into the beauty of it, too. In order to lose you first must have loved. There is so much to love about this world, about its planets and its people, past and present. It deserves an essay. It seems I can't even post quickly about how much it means to me, without almost writing one.

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I don’t usually rob crockery stores out of fear of getting caught, but it was a whisk I was willing to take

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Critical Role: 10 Years of Storytelling

Campaign 1, Episode 115, "The Chapter Closes." // Taliesin Jaffe, in "As D&D booms, 'Critical Role' makes its own kind of nerd celebrity" by Sarah Parvini // Campaign 3, Episode 31, "Breaking Point" // On Loving by Forugh Farrokhzad, tr. Sholeh Wolpé // The Legend of Vox Machina at NYCC 2022 // 8-bit Stories // Campaign 1 Wrap-Up // “Without You Without Them” by boygenius // Campaign 2, Episode 141, "Fond Farewells." // Campaign 3: Behind the Set // Letters to Milena by Franz Kafka // Campaign 1, Episode 115, "The Chapter Closes." // Explanation of the final Vex’ahlia playlist by Laura Bailey // Liam's Quest: Full Circle // Backwards by Warsan Shire // Exandria Unlimited: Kymal, Part 2 // Explanation of Fearne’s second playlist by Ashley Johnson // Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson // San Diego Comic-Con 2023, Critical Role: Fireside Chat & Cast Q&A // Exandria Unlimited Cooldown: Divergence Episode 4 // Campaign 3, Episode 23, "To the Skies." // Explanation of the final Percy playlist by Taliesin Jaffe // "For Good" by Stephen Schwartz // Campaign 3, Episode 91, "True Heroism." // Exandria Unlimited: Calamity, Episode 4, "Fire and Ruin." // Campaign 3, Episode 121, "A New Age Begins."

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erika's masterful (demonstration of a) nat 20 seduction of dungeon master @quiddie was a blessing and a delight to witness

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the average person kills zero birds with one stone.

dino comet georg however-

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irish people singing pink pony club: won’t maek my mama proud😔, she’s gonna cause a scene🥺

She sees her baby geddel- ✨

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magic au where the mc is a foster kid who’s scrappy and has holes in the knees and elbows of all their clothes, who repurposes old linen to make their school robes, who instead of buying a cauldron steals borrows an industrial size soup pot from the cafeteria kitchen, who instead of using magic against the bullies’ curses gives them a bloody nose and a black eye. give me the kid who instead of choosing some delicate, pedigree familiar goes to the city centre and catches the meanest fattest pigeon they can find (the only one that didn’t fly away, at least), the one who knows first aid instead of trying to magic injuries away. give me the scrappy magician!!!

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SHAPE HELL

Yup.

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Just listened to my first episode of Camp Here and There and for some reason Sydney O’Sargent reminds me of Charlie from Hazbin Hotel

I will not be elaborating on this.

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I love Igors generally in the discworld but i particularly like Igor in monstrous regiment for reasons that should be obvious if you've read it and i especially like this explanation of Igors

bonus trans joke cause this book is 40% trans jokes by volume

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Pickpocket? Nah, i like my own just fine thanks

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The Alpilles with Olive Trees in the Foreground (1889) by Vincent van Gogh

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I’m not just a good pair of tits. I’m also incredibly annoying

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Situations like this are always so disappointing and unpleasant, and hard to navigate especially when you’re a fan of the work done. This is a fairly level take, and framed the situation in a light that is admittedly protective of TP, but that is something I agree with.

There was an interesting thread on Bluesky dissecting Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's relationship

TL:DR - It seems like Gaiman has been exaggerating the level of closeness between them for YEARS

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finding out there's a frankenstein ballet and that it was in october of last year…DEVASTATING

look at this. look at these. im foaming at the mouth