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Ok

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Our Favorites: [Day 23/24] Nat’s Favorite Scene Overall (The Lord of the rings) ↳ I can’t carry it for you. But I can carry you.

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Do you have any opinions on who would be the most interesting AU teacher for Luke? Unlike a lot of people I do actually like Yoda, but I also find it interesting to entertain who could have trained him in a more prequel-type way

I'm a Yoda fan myself! I see a lot of AUs put him with Obi-Wan, if he had access to the whole of the PT Jedi Order for traditional training, but I think that's less interesting, although there'd definitely be a lot to unpack there.

In thinking about it for fic purposes, I've also thought about Mace - I don't think that would go badly at all, and it would be interesting to see what Mace's hardline attitude and firm commitment to the Jedi and to justice would manifest as in Luke "I can save him" Skywalker.

There's other masters who I think would be interesting if handled in a way that teased out their characters - Luminara Unduli, Depa Billaba, etc. - but while I know a bit about them as people, I don't know them quite as well fleshed out, their strengths and foibles and so on.

But I loooove Yoda and I think he and Luke are fascinating together. I love Yoda's teaching style and I think he'd love Luke in a happy AU, and that he genuinely loved Luke even in canon, with great affection for him. He's just a silly old man and Luke's so easy to wind up but also so eager to learn, I think they'd get along fantastically.

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"I want to live in a world in which teenagers can fulfil their natural purpose of being annoying" and "I do not always want to be annoyed by the teenagers" are compatible sentiments

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I’m visiting my friend right now in her 18th century home she’s restoring where the lights don’t work in one part of the house, creeping to the bathroom like some sort of haunt, feeling for the walls with rising dread, utterly lost in the perfect darkness, like Jonathan Harker in Dracula’s castle, if Jonathan Harker were the sort of person to trip and stand there cringing in the night as his can of trader joe’s sparkling rhubarb-strawberry juice bangs all the way down the oaken staircase, one step at a time, the cacophony of a freight train, and then proceed to practically crawl through the remaining dark to the bathroom for a washcloth, to wipe up the trader joe’s sparkling rhubarb-strawberry juice before it can soak into the wood floor, with the fevered terror of lady macbeth hallucinating blood on her hands

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Wishing you a happy solstice (winter or summer, as the case may be). Unless you're a flat earther, in which case, Happy Inexplicable Phenomenon!

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hi any life advice for 21yo

Don't date thirty-year-olds until you are at least 25.

Having a glass of water for every glass of alcohol will give you a 50% reduction in hangover viciousness.

Bad people will use your willingness to be quiet as a weapon against you. If someone's being awful to you and trusting you'll be quiet to keep from making waves, surprise them.

There is no physical object in the world that is worth as much as your honor.

Honor is not the same as dignity. Retaining one sometimes means leaving the other aside.

Don't have any sex you don't want to have; have as much as you want of the sex that you do, whether that's a lot, a little, or none at all. Nothing you can do to your own body is immoral, unless you're doing it as an act of self-punishment.

Food is morally neutral. You do not have to earn the right to eat calories. Fat and sugar keep your brain from eating itself.

Learning to sit still and breathe--in, in, in, hold, hold, hold, out, out, out, out, out, out--can give you five feet of clear space around yourself in a maelstrom.

Find out how to make three good meals: A comfort meal you can make for just yourself relatively easily, a fancy meal you can use to wow a date, and a meal you can feed a bunch of people. All the other cooking can come later, but you can build a community on those three meals.

If you ever get to the point that things are so bleak you can see no other way forward but to die, make any other choice. If that means leaving everything you own and being a beach bum, or quitting your career, or taking up or leaving a religion, or deciding to bicycle across the country, so be it; living means more chances, dying means everything stops and you don't get to see any more interesting things. As you have not yet seen all the things that can interest you, it is better to live.

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The holy grail of searching through academic literature is coming across a string of publications that are like:

Here’s An Idea. Smith et al. 2016

Terrible Idea; a comment on Smith et al. 2016. Johnson 2016.

You’re Wrong Too; a response to Johnson 2016. Nelson 2016.

Guys Just Stop Fighting, None Of Us Know What’s Going On; a Review of the Current Literature. McBrien 2017.

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One of the really insidious ways black people in media get treated is that despite our stereotypes expanding outside of "thug" "slave" and "prostitute", we are still very limited on *what* we can be portrayed as.

It is no shock to me that the two black women in Veilguard, for instance, are either medium toned like myself or a nonhuman skin color (introduced as a woman). It doesn't escape my attention that the only black woman in Baldur's Gate list of companions is also a nonhuman skin color. Dark skinned black women are still considered too unattractive to include as potential romanceable candidates, as it *also* does not escape my attention that the darkest we've had was Vivienne who was simultaneously regarded as an incredibly unlikeable character by huge swaths of the fandom and also unavailable for romance.

But moreover- why can't the bubbley nerdy cute mage be a black woman? Why can't the shy but resourceful archer be a black woman? Why does the black woman have to be someone with their guard up, walls as high as a skyscraper, cynical and callous? Why can't the black woman be the warm and loving Wynne, or the somewhat naive yet devout Leliana? The stalwart and just Aveline? I know plenty of Isabelas, and Viviennes, and Neves, and Taashs, but I also know plenty who are Merrill, or Bellara*, or Harding, or Cassandra, and I even lived with a Sera for a while. Why can't she be Bethany or Morrigan?

The closest we had was Josephine, who again is still fairly light skinned, but at least she has a bit more flexibility. And she isn't a companion, so her screen time is fairly minimal if you're not taking the time to romance her.

*And I don't begrudge Bellara too much, as A: I adore her and B: I'm pretty sure she's our first visibly Asian companion which is a milestone in itself. My point is more that Bellara could be black with virtually no story change because I know plenty of bubbly chirpy friendly black women who have a deep love of their hobbies and interests, who are bisexual and even prefer women, with deep trauma in their pasts, and yet the choice to *not* do that speaks to a problem the media has in their depiction of black women that is far bigger than Bioware.

And it doesn't escape my attention that the men have this problem as well- Wyll and Davrin* are both regarded as boring by their respective fandoms due to the choice to play it safe and stick with the extremely good and upright and just knight character instead of giving them something more messy- Astarion and Lucanis could be black with, as said, little-to-no change in their storyline because I know-even have dated- pansexual former sex worker black men with intensely complicated feelings about sex and intimacy, and I've had plenty of ex-con soft yet dangerous men holding themselves at a distance to prevent themselves from hurting anyone as my friends and even extended family.

I know plenty of intensely nerdy and probably autistic black guys who will infodump gladly about their special interest to the point of it consuming them. I know plenty of black guys with martyr complexes who think they have to tear the world- and themselves- apart just to fix what is broken in this world. I know plenty of black guys who, despite their own inability to get their shit together, are like a port in a storm every time you talk to them. I know plenty of black guys who are extremely educated and well respected within their field, with gentle yet commanding demeanor. Any of these characters *could* be black, and yet they aren't, and the choice to do so is again far bigger than Bioware and Larian.

*Davrin, like Vivienne, being the darkest and first blatantly black male companion instead of potentially able to be ambiguously "of color" like Zevran, Fenris, and Dorian. Even more damning that they'd considered, like Sera, making Solas blatantly black in his concept art and instead chose to make him a pale egg.

As someone desperate for representation, it becomes quickly obvious as I take inventory of what roles black people are given that we still aren't considered as complex and nuanced and interesting. We're allowed to be more than we were before, but we still have a long way to go.

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"they're just trying to make people afraid of voicing their OPINIONS" Good. I want you to be as afraid of being transphobic as I was to transition. At LEAST that afraid.

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I just met a mother of an autistic child who thinks vaccines cause autism but is still pro-vaccine. Didn't know ppl like her existed tbh

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i dont consider myself a 'fashion guru' by any means but one thing i will say is guys you dont need to know the specific brand an item you like is - you need to know what the item is called. very rarely does a brand matter, but knowing that pair of pants is called 'cargo' vs 'boot cut' or the names of dress styles is going to help you find clothes you like WAAAYYYY faster than brand shopping

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Don't Always Surprise the Audience

Sometimes, jokes the audience sees coming are better.

Sometimes, kills the audience sees coming are better.

Sometimes, twists the audience sees coming are better.

Let these things happen. Foreshadowing is FUN, yo.

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people will say "why cant the eldritch gods just be nice to humans :((" and then kill a bug for existing near them

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ARCANE | Character Evolutions