#/SNAKES. need i say more? :>

[keeps-ache]

there are a couple changes i would make to the keyboard if i could:

wiggly exclamation mark

bleeding heart emoji

varying snake emojis (more poses would be fun)

question mark with a little heart for the dot bc, well,

more explosions

and that is all thank you

[nothing-impt]

Fanfic writers I will get on my knees for one of y’all to write some Tiresias/Hermes action 🧎🧎🧎

[enasalenaste]

chisme4FINAL.csp

[dootznbootz]

I think some folks MAY have gotten the wrong idea about how I feel about Circe with some of my posts. So, to clear the air...

Homies, I love that fucked up sorceress.

I love how we're never given a reason why she turns people into animals. That's so funny and so awful. And another potion-making magic gal?!?! I love that she's just basically vibing on an island doing whatever she wants. I even love the fact that she scares Odysseus shitless! She's morally gray and that's why she's FUN.

I just sincerely hate when people try to girlboss her or have her be a victim of SA when she never was Looking at you, Miller. Especially when she was actually the one who coerced Odysseus in exchange for his men being transformed back into humans. And even then, while he was clearly afraid of her, (it's in the language of the Odyssey) she likely meant him no harm after a certain point. He just didn't know that.

Why does she need a reason to do awful things? Why can't she just be a goddess who does whatever she wants? That's the reason why I love her!!! She's fucked up!!! :D

I hate what the Telegony did to her as well! >:( You're telling me, this sorceress goddess, who makes potions (!!!) wouldn't have magic contraceptives??? Would WANT CHILDREN?!?! WITH THE PATHETIC WIFEMAN?! No. Fuck no. Eugammon of Cyrene, I have beef with you 🤬

Anyways!!! Understand all the "#anti circe" I have is simply Anti "Girlboss Circe" or the book. I genuinely think she's neat af as her morally gray, fucked up sorceress self and just get frustrated with...everything :'D

[rigelmejo]

Something that always annoys me is the idea only 1 language learning method works. Which is not true. While it may be possible that, for a particular individual, only a few out of many study methods may work well enough for That Individual to make progress and stay motivated... that doesn't mean all the other study methods won't work for anyone else out there, or that those few methods will work for every other given person.

Obviously if you've been studying a while, then you already figured out what kinds of things work for you and don't. If you're a beginner, just wading into studying?

I would suggest you simply look for study methods that: 1. Teach you new things regularly, 2. Review and practice things you've learned, 3. Include studying things you need for your particular goals (for example if your goal is to read X book then the study materials at some point should involve reading practice and some words the book contains, if your goal is to talk about Y then the study materials should include some information about pronunciation and words you'll need to be able to say).

As you can imagine, a TON of study materials will meet these requirements. And you can study a given skill in a LOT of ways.

(Reading is my focus lol so just for reading, a beginner might: do vocabulary study with lists or conversations with native speakers or watching shows and looking words up or listening to dialogues with a transcript like in a textbook or graded readers or a picture book with word labels in the target language or a video game with labelled objects in target language, all of those things as long as your vocabulary is improving or reading practice is happening would help you make progress). So to improve reading skill as a beginner: you could study with a textbook, a podcast with transcript, a classroom or tutor with words written down in target language (like TPRS), a video game, a TV show and a translate app on your phone, a friend you talk with (who either writes words down or you look up words you hear with a translate app), a friend you text with, srs flashcards like anki (provided there's text) etc. As long as there's new words, and/or you're practicing reading, the study method may work. If it works will come down to if you can stay motivated doing it regularly, and make sure you regularly learn some new things and review/practice things you've already studied.

So consider those things when you see people selling a study method as a product (especially when it's costing you money). Consider if it teaches you NEW things, and are those new things related to your goals, and how MUCH new stuff will it teach you before you finish it? Consider if it provides review or practice, or if you can use it's materials to review on your own making up your own method, or if you'll need to do separate review/practice.

So examples:

LingQ. Can it teach you many new words? Yes, thousands, since you can import any texts you want when you get done with their provided material (I have no idea how much their beginner material covers though in terms of words... I would hope 1000-3000 words but that can be researched). Is your goal reading? It's suited to reading, so you will practice and review often with it. Cost? I think it was $12 a month when I last had it, and the price may have increased. Is it worth it? Depends on a learner's needs. I found it was wasting my money, so I chose to use free tools like Pleco and Readibu apps - since those apps are suited for Chinese learners and have better translations, Pleco has better paid graded reader material if I was going to spend money, and both Pleco and Readibu let me import texts so I can learn thousands of new words just like LingQ but free. Now that I'm not a beginner, I often use Microsoft Edge to read chinese... since I can still click-translate words easily (all my web browsers have that tool free), and Edge's TTS voice is helpful for pronunciation and sounds quite good. I read webnovels online so Edge works well. But it's translations aren't as good as Pleco or Readibu, so if I still needed translations more I would use them. So... is LingQ a good study method? Its certainly a study method marketed to buy. Well... the method is suited to improving reading skill, at least. It costs money, which is a negative, but it does offer a lot. However: everything it does regarding reading can be done free with other apps or sites or web browsers on their own. So if paying money motivates you to read... sure. LingQ does have a few word tracking features a learner may find worth the money, keeping in mind the actual read-to-learn method can be done free without lingq. (Also... while LingQ is a valid option for improving reading, if the learners goal is speaking then it would be important to think of what study activities the learner will do OUTSIDE of LingQ to improve speaking... because I've seen how LingQ is marketed as "how to learn a language" but it's only focused on some skills. It has vocabulary and grammar in some sense, since you'll read a lot and encounter new words and structures. But it doesnt have speaking or writing practice at least last time I was on it. Those activities would need to be worked on, on your own).

You can do that kind of cost/benefit contemplating with any study method material you see being sold. Amother example: there's a beginner Mandarin course called Mandarin Blueprint. It teaches like 800 words. Thats all. It may be worthwhile for a beginner... who still needs to learn 800 common words. But if you already know a few hundred words, the benefit of the course is less, you'll need to find a new material to teach you more new stuff soon. And the price was like a few hundred for the course... which for me personally was too much to spend, when I had already learned 800 hanzi from a book that cost me 12 dollars and 2000 words from a free user made memrise deck. The course claimed to get a person speaking, competent, but anyone not a beginner would say speaking basically with 800 words is nowhere near the level of working in Chinese or just doing a lot of daily life stuff, or reading/listening to media. (Although for the motivated beginner if you're learning 800 words on your own like I was, its definitely close to the point of jumping to learn more words and start reading kids and teenager books, and watching easier shows if you're willing to look new words up). So to me... Mandarin Blueprint felt like overselling some basic beginner materials. (Again when I know several other things that teach beginner stuff either more in depth so HSK test prep classes, and college courses, or that teach beginner stuff to the same depth as Mandarin Blueprint but free).

Some study materials aren't going to act like they teach everything. I've seen chinese courses just for learning to speak tones better and general pronunciation - probably worthwhile if your goal is to improve speaking and a teacher could help improve the issues your having. But a learner needs to be aware for that course that they'll need to study vocabulary on their own, its JUST a pronunciation improvement course.

[sysig]

Stretch contest, with some very clear and unfair advantages (Patreon)

[eden-paradox]

my maybe controversial Andrew design 😭 I imagine he dyed the brown parts of his hair after returning from rehab in book 3

[scoriarose]

She heard me doing things so she came up to the side of her baby bin and blelelelele'd at me until I noticed her. She greets me every morning where we spend the first hour of every day together, her just resting in my hand and me holding her, often gently petting her head and tiny scales. If there is a heaven, that first hour we spend together is it.

She is getting a larger enclosure for her birthday in a month and a half. :D Hopefully I can get it done in time, as I haven't sculpted a custom enclosure before and will be trying some new artistic critiques. I do have experience sculpting though. My biggest worry is the paints and sealing them properly! Art I can do- but food safe art that will be in a moist bioactive enclosure is new for me.

[edwardsissyhandsthtdanceslikeabb]

Blink Twice is an encapsulation of dubiousness to me, not only in the thinking it inspires, but in the layers you’re left grappling with, and then the inferences one has to resonate with after that.

and nothing evidences that more than the intangible nature of the disturbing angle to me, as its muddied in the layers of complication and nuance that lurk beneath. i mean the movie itself paints over the tragedies with cynicism, is entirely dedicated to weaponizing intuition and comfort against you.

i’d never read it as disturbed, and it too, never lets you mourn in turn. bc its insane at its inception, warped by frida’s fanatical infatuation with slater, bordering preying, a reverence for one's kill. and lures us with psychedelic, sugary visuals, with the indulgence – on food, luxury, substances. on billionaire brainrot fodder, perpetuating their power, craving proximity. inviting it into our homes, our heads. the movie *wants* you, most of all, to understand frida’s hunger. and its that thirst i most resonate with, not for a lack of empathy, or even technical prowess, but the basal intrigue it cemented in me instead.

bc it’s a movie that’s nearly primal for me. it scents cycles and desensitization, roles and autonomy, a self-infliction of decay, and disorients you before you’re allowed a proper lungful. there are only questions. shifts. a russian doll of detail and poison, and the inviolability that invoked, ironically only ever paralyzed my thinking, serving creative rot, over any epiphanies or nuance i could hope to be enlightened to.

the animalistic cruelty of desire is not there to be contextualized, but understood. felt. a relationship as inextricable as frida and slater’s. with slater likely parasitizing her algorithm, wielding his techbro power to further entrap her. like how we routinely indulge in the same. you rewind the movie, and pick out signs of danger, slater snickering at frida praising her memory, the supposed water he drinks and its snake-venom hue, the recurring jingling of a necklace, and like frida, have the fantasy demystified, wonder how there was *ever* an illusion of safety.

so watching an analysis video which posits that slater smokes the venom, that he indulges all suffering except his own, just as frida remembers the doctor’s blinks of warning, while burying the suffering they foresee, that they have seen, is watching frida emulate slater, and slater her.

it’s the movie’s thesis statement: there is no healing, there is no forgiveness, only embrace, only numbness, apathy. and when a stray tear glistens on slater’s face, he mourns not for the men, for paternalistic, patriarchal dominance, but for his friend. the only one he claims. he mourns their intimacy, their unity — grieves the good time™. a good time unattainable within trauma, within memory.

yet this pleasure, love, are perverted into captivity, and all i ended up thinking of was: “i love you means you’re never ever, ever getting rid of me.” that slater thinks he knows best, thinks he’s doing good by unburdening her, yet scars her all the same.

as bodies are made immaterial to him, dispossessed of sanctity or autonomy and so their desecration harmless. as slater makes frida a conduit for physical harm while lavishing her emotionally, and yet also exploiting their bond, feeding on their closeness for the labor of love and pain it provides. bc the one thing he needs, the one thing he cannot sacrifice, is her closeness, her intimacy, as it validates his ethos of forgetfulness, reflects it back at him. thusly, frida is reduced to a vessel of experience just as he was, just as he reduces himself to, oversaturated in good times™.

good times masquerading as truth, which slater exposes a latent contempt for, as he emasculates the remaining boy for his cowardice, his complacency, despite his glaringly disoriented, unaware state. regardless of any violation he too may have suffered, when we’d seen him scooting away from another man on the ground, enfeebled and vulnerated. in spite of slater’s aggrievement by his own lapses in memory, his own embracing of that which violated him, and violated also, those he cares abt. but slater is relieved of any loneliness by this flagelattory camaraderie, of the perpetual loss of significance, when frida remains a fixture in his suffering, when she constantly violates her boundaries too.

and we too strain our boundaries, test our empathy with the narratives we are inclined to accept. frida the girlboss or frida the fallen angel? akin to the tests slater sets for her, handing her clarity just to see what she dares remember. the good time™, the willing participant, the indulged, or the languished? seeing if she’s really forgiven, or rather, forgotten instead, drawn to indulgence despite how its hurt her. when she endangers jess in turn, desperate to feel valued, to *feel* power — in it all, is the powerstruggle.

and yet, also a relationship, as jess protects frida despite it all, and frida wakes up to the deception bc of her love for jess. while the island, the staff, embrace frida as if she has always been, will find her way around just as she will find a way to enlightenment, handed venom as if it were benign, as if the island itself wanted her freed. pests, predators, turned to salvation, just as poison becomes a cure. the cure. and when the island has been said to be the garden of eden, enlightenment is truly then, the original sin. the genesis of awareness.

and thusly, frida reclaims power by hurting him, fed his own poison. frida now the snake, frida refusing to leave the island still. denied healing, alienated from it, and so stuck still. bound. bound too, as we watched them enjoy every intimacy except the physical, sharing the pain and trauma they’d been subjected to with a nearly ironic a-sexuality, transcendent of it. with slater seeing her as his best friend. exempt from death and equally so from release.

and that twisted, appropriative bond, the repurposing of trauma, and so feeling a sick sense of ownership over it, love for it, are equally present in frida keeping him from death.

her newfound, bleach white luxury, the disappearing stains and panopticon of elitism, are not horrific until they are, and you either embrace it, or you let it hurt. and frida, red rabbit running, red rabbit caught in slater’s sick, trivializing game, already likened to livestock by her name, decided to become the hunter instead. made high on the chase.

unlike slater who provides and subjects experiences onto others, now there is frida who takes and caters experiences for herself. all congratulatory. all good.

thusly, the movie is the trip, it’s delusion and entanglement and the self-eating snake, and trying to sterilize that is as futile as it is sacrilegious.

[indiestsnake]

my contribution to the worldless fandom was not grace and fury nor the first proper content of Edda/Aven, no no no. something far greater.

it was breaking the community seal on finding the duo hot

somebody douse me in holy water

[darabeatha]

Valentines' personality test ! : 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐀𝐃𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐀𝐑𝐘, 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐄𝐕𝐈𝐋 𝐎𝐍𝐄. 𝐋.𝐔𝐂𝐈𝐅𝐄𝐑.

[anythingalicecooper]

💀 I'M NOT WORTHY!!! 💀

The concert was EUPHORIC!!

Alice Cooper's energy was unreal. The way he owned the stage is the reason he is king. The songs brought so many happy memories, and I couldn't believe that I got to sing along. The band was incredible!!! Just an incredible performance all round. I had such a great time.

A dream come true ✨️

[rubitheracoon]

Who knew the first humanoid I would ever draw decently would actually be the character I've been obsessed with for the last 3 months

ANYWAY I FINALLY MANAGED TO DRAW A PERSON IM SO HAPPY!!

[farosdaughter]

Thinking about the fact that Suzanne Collins told Francis Lawrence, the director of the THG movies as well as TBOSAS, what happens to Lucy Gray after the end of the prequel.

Maybe it’s my tinfoil hat speaking, but doesn’t that implicitly suggest that Lucy Gray’s fate post TBOSAS is relevant to the narrative? Aka, that her story is still linked to that of Panem and she possibly played a role in the events of THG, or at least made a reappearance in the intervening 64 years.

[crimsonnile]

I've never chosen a LI so fast

[elantedronai]

Tired of people saying ‘I hope no one loves Snow after the ABOSAS movie.’ You can love a character while simultaneously admitting they’re a piece of shit who would deserve death if they really existed. I love Snow as a character because I find him entertaining, and the way he continually lies to himself throughout the entire book about being a hero while he’s actually sociopathic is fascinating. I would read an entire trilogy about him, I think he’s a great character. I also love the themes THG + ABOSAS bring up - it’s easily possible to enjoy a fictional character while also acknowledging that the narrative is a warning against people like them.

There’s a huge difference between loving/enjoying a character and romanticizing them. If someone is saying ‘hey, I agree with what Snow is doing’ then that’s a whole different ballgame. But moralizing about how ‘if you like this bad character then YOU’RE bad and don’t get the nuances of the story’… C’mon, people. Sure, there are some fans who are that brand of crazy, but I like to think the majority of us are capable of critical thinking. Especially since a good chunk of THG fans are adults now.

Also, young President Snow is canonically hot. Complaints about how people will drool over him because the actor is hot are wild to me because that’s part of the point. Evil can be beautiful and dressed up; I know for a fact there would be endless amounts of bitching if he was some butt-ugly, misshapen, obese hunchback or something because ‘Hollywood always makes the evil people ugly and the good people hot.’ He’s hot and people will thirst over him for that. And that’s fine too. As long as everyone can differentiate between fiction and reality, let them enjoy what they enjoy. Truly, who cares if people wanna be railed by a fictional evil president.