#'oh such and such don't know you passive tense is *evil*??'

[hapigairu]

I feel like there's a huge misunderstanding in the fandom on how much the church can and can't do. People claiming they have authority regarding what happens to Duscur and Sreng and pinning them as being involved/enabling the Duscur genocide and Sreng invasion when there's nothing in the text to prove that. It feels like a bunch of whataboutisms.

That's not me saying the church is perfect or above criticism. You could argue them being passive about the state of their branches, specifically the western church is a flaw and one that bites them more often than not; they only took action to investigate after Rhea had a second assassination attempt. But aside from that, yeah they don't hold much if at all any authority over the countries in Fodlan.

My apologies for the late response!

Yes, the discrepancies between what the games are trying to say and what some people choose to interpret it are... quite strange to say the least.

You can argue that it has a huge cultural and historical importance and therefore at least some manner of influence on the continent. And they do get money from nobles. Sure. But beyond that? Weeeell....

The Church has been kicked out of Adrestia about a century ago. If they held as much power as some people like to believe, things would have been way more tense between the Empire and the Church (they could have attempted to regain their authority by force, for example). But, while the Church has almost no presence there, Adrestian nobles are still welcome to Garreg Mach, be it to study, do research or teach.

Nobles do make donations to the Church but aren't obligated. When Thales slithered Arundel, he stopped giving money to the Church and the latter basically reacted like "Oh this is strange".

The Church doesn't intervene unless asked to or they are the target (ex: Lonato). And true, they could have taken a more active stance when it comes to dealing with the Western Church. But I don't know that it would have gone well, considering how much of a mess Faerghus' political landscape is and how much the Western Church loathes the Central Church. It's entirely possible the Central Church didn't want to cause any more turmoil by getting involved. Was it a mistake? In retrospect, sure. But, on the other hand, them meddling in Faerghus' affairs because things could get out of hand would likely have been taken very badly.

Also yes, they don't have the authority to tell the three countries' monarchs how to rule or who should rule next. And... they had nothing to do with the founding of the Leicester Alliance?

So yeah, the Church's position in Fodlan is rather complex and reducing it to "they're secretly ruling the continent" or "they don't do anything and are useless!" is inaccurate but also... uninteresting?

I guess some of this comes from the fact that religion is seen in a bad light in many parts of the world, which is absolutely understandable. So many people were slaughtered and oppressed, so many cultures have been practically destroyed, etc. all in the name of Christianity -to name one- and civilisation. Because of course, they both go hand in hand /s. But the Church of Seiros is not the Catholic Church, far from it.

Another reason I can think of is that in many video games (especially Japanese), religion is this big evil that is behind everything that is wrong in the world. You have the Yevon faith in Final Fantasy X, or the whole... Hyzante theocracy mess in Triangle Strategy. And, to a lesser extent -because they're not the main villains of the game-, the Witcher 3's cult of the Eternal Fire that worked with Radovid and murdered any sorceress or, later, non-human they could find for the crime of... existing (seriously, fuck the Eternal Fire and Radovid). So, the Church of Seiros not being the bad guys at all is probably counterintuitive to many people and a hard pill to swallow.

[pitbullwithaship]

DOCTOR WHO LIVEBLOG S3 EP11

Okeydoke y'all, more fun times to be had. Yay.

Oh dear Cardiff again

JACK!!! YAY!!!

End of the universe time

Oh jeez poor Jack, don't just leave him out there

Okay sharp teeth

Oh, old man

I like coffee

*lies through his teeth*

I like bug girl she seems nice

HE DOESNT KNOW, WOW THATS AMAZING

We should go *runs outside grinning*

Back in the old days lol

HE WAS ONLY SAYING HELLO

Dude communication

AAAHHH YES ALIVE HES SO HAPPY AAHHH

YOU TWO CUT IT OUT lol

I love Jack and Martha, New duo

Immortal problems

HES MISSED THIS sorry I love him

SYLO? SYLO, SYLO, SYLO FOR ME lol I love them

Jack and the Doctor really need to talk it out and stop being passive aggressive

TINY CHILD

We humans are pretty damn good at surviving

STOP IT love them

Oh fuck sharp teeth person

STOP IT I love them so much and Jack needs to stop flirting

BASICALLY SORT OF not a clue sorry

THE HAND

Huh, they're not even a legend anymore

I'd love to be a hermit

Havens always sound better than they are

Okay is professor dude dying or something

I love the Doctor and Jack's friendship so much

They're still in sync

Oh Sharon teeth lady again

Gluten, tsk tsk I can't eat that

Okay wait is something horrible and bad going to happen to the professor

DRUMS OH DEAR

Oh poor lovelorn girlies

Very Tense, with not-tense music that's odd

Oh dear sabotage that's not amazing

Oh dear

Electrocuted himself lol

Oh dear she's dead

Girlie have you not learned by now that he's immortal

WAS SOMEONE KISSING ME I LOVE HIM

Ha he admits he was running!!!!

Oh dear whispering oh dear bad things

People are never facts, no

FLASHBACK

Great way for Martha to learn all this

*avoids the question*

FANTASTIC

Cheeky lol

OMG OMG WHAT BACKSTORY REVEAL FOR THE PROFESSOR OMG GALLIFREYAN

HOPE BUT ALSO SADNESS OMG FERAL TIME

Oh dear that voice sounds mildly evil

Omg omg omg holy hell

Oh dear oh dear oh dearie me oh my god

Oh fuck he's very very mean evil bad

THE MASTER AAAAHHHHHH

YES GIRLIE SHOOT HIM

Oh dear he is in the tardis

Holy shit

Oh he's a silly billy villy

Oh shit what no cliffhanger I hate those nooo

[starry-bi-sky]

#i love this so much#but i have heavy thoughts#1. what happened to vlad. he poisoned a kid and is also half ghost what did they do with him. did he just kidnap danny and vlad just -#-forever wonders what happened to him?

!!! I kept that vague on purpose for interpretation! And frankly also because I haven't thought too deep on it yet-- but my idea was that, at least in the beginning, Vlad is actively still looking for Danny, and its too dangerous for Bruce to try and take him head on in custody battle because of the whole "halfa-overshadowing-he-can-just-mind-control-the-courts" thing! If nothing happens, Vlad goes back into billionaire isolation and Danny keeps his head down to avoid his attention. If something happens: prison. Probably.

do they never casually encounter each other? cause imagine this. listen. listen#older dick taking danny for lunch#just chilling#maybe in the middle of a pun match#>:)#introduce vlad#who has believed for some years that danny's core broke and he ceased to exist#and then sees him happy with a new family. laughing and (apparently) HEALTHY#and#hshshdhdhdhshsjhddjjs#DANIEL?!?!? little badger is that you?!?!? (while crying crocodile tears)#how does danny react to this

THIS! I am delighted to sink my teeth into this. Danny would freeze if he saw or heard Vlad, its a very different reaction than before Vlad poisoned him. And for, well, obvious reasons. Vlad's hurt him before, but that's to be expected from an archnemesis, and Danny would always beat him in the end.

This? This is different. Danny's suffered under Vlad's abusive hands, and suffered long after he escaped him, because of him. Danny's terrified of him, and Vlad poisoning him is one of the main reasons why. Hearing his voice, and seeing him approaching him, has Danny freezing in his seat.

(Of course his younger-big brother dick notices this, and gets immediately on guard. And then he sees who the guy is, and his body language rapidly turns tense and hostile.)

Dick starts standing up, ready to verbally assault Vlad Masters, and Danny grabs his hand and yanks him down. Tearing his eyes away for a moment to dig them into Dick; "No. No, no. Don't. Please don't." He whispers to him, and then immediately turns back to see Vlad.

Vlad tries to hug him, and Danny full body flinches away. Only to remember that Dick is right behind him, and like a good older-little brother, adjusts to try and shield him from Vlad. Vlad gets that hug, although Danny is as stiff as a statue, before he pulls away and starts "fretting" over him.

Grabbing his shoulders; touching his face; trying to hold his arms. Trying to drag him up and out of his seat to make it easier to pull him away. He's very Mother Gothel levels of manipulation and paternal concern. "Oh Daniel, you have no idea how worried sick I've been. You know you're far too fragile to run off like that, god it's been ages! I'm so relieved you're alright."

Danny is. trying not to hyperventilate. Dick is like, .5 seconds away from leaping over the table and socking Vlad Masters in the jaw right then and there. Vlad doesn't recognize Dick as famous Richard Grayson-Wayne because Dick threw on a simple anti-paparazzi disguise. (Hoodie, mask, hat). And when Vlad asks for his name, Dick lies out of his ass and gives him a fake name on the spot.

("You must be the gentleman taking care of my Daniel, I must have your name.") ("...I'm Alex.") ("Alex..?") ("Hart.") (Well, Alexander, I really must thank you again. I'll make sure you're properly compensated, I know my Daniel can be quite a handful.") (Vlad was fully intending on having "Alex" killed. Because he's a possessive, evil bastard of a man)

Danny does get away of course. But not without a little trouble at first. Dick tries to passively coax Vlad into giving Danny back with various excuses (going back to their "apartment" to get Danny's things, for one) but Vlad rebuffs each one. Until eventually Danny manages to get his bearings, and calm himself down long enough to shove Vlad off him and run away again.

Dick follows his lead, of course. But not before throwing his drink in Vlad's eyes, calling him a slew of insults, and then while Vlad is trying to get coffee out of his eyes, proceeds to toss him over the table.

They both get home safely, but the stress of it all leaves Danny sick the next day, and paranoid for the rest of the week.

#YYYYYYYYY#POR OTRO LADO#2. jason#jason who wants to find his mother#does he go to danny?#asks for advice but still dies?#never died and instead serves as a catalyst for finally having healthy communication on the family?#if he does die#can danny look for him on the realms?#is danny the reason jay revives?#is he there when he crawls his way out of the coffin#desperately digging from the other side?#does danny try to kill joker?

I really love the idea that Danny manages to save Jason. Canon divergence my beloved <3. Of course Jason still dying is very angsty -- and i've had thoughts about him getting angry on Danny's behalf too upon realizing Danny's predicament -- Bruce has two dead children and he hasn't even been able to help the first one. BUT

Danny managing to reach the warehouse with a few minutes to spare before the bomb goes off, and desperately trying to get the doors -- locked and chained -- off. For some reason or another, he doesn't have his lockpicks on him. He's yelling for Jason, trying to get a response.

(Danny calls all his little brothers various bird nicknames too. "Chickling", "chick", and "birdy" are his favorites. Fledgling and baby bird are a little more uncommon. If he's feeling playful or if his brothers are grumpy, he calls them "broodling".)

In the end, Danny decides to go "fuck it" and uses his intangibility to bypass the wall. He nearly goes into a rage when he sees Sheila standing there smoking a cigarette, and doing nothing to help his baby brother bleeding out on the floor.

He ignores her and gathers his brother instead, which seems to kick Sheila into gear and as Danny's beelining for the door she asks him "what about me?"

He tells her to fuck off, then mutters an apology to Jason because he knows that's his mom. Jason doesn't have much of a response. Jason is concussed.

Danny gets them out of the building just as it explodes, and since he's already using his intangibility, he goes one step "fuck IT" further, and shields them both. He regrets nothing. The both of them live, just heavily injured.

If jason dies, then Danny is not the reason Jason revives, but he is there when Jay drags himself out of the grave. He's there to sink his fingers into the gravedirt and dig him out in return. He's holding Jason for nearly an hour, the both of them crying, when he decides to call Bruce and let him know. Then while he's at it, lets Dick know.

Dick and Bruce are both there in ten.

(Danny can't look for Jason in the realms because imo, he has no access to it. And he couldn't even if he would, his body would automatically absorb the high concentration of ectoplasm in the realms, and that would be like giving a feast to a stray dog for the blood blossom in his veins.)

(Doesn't mean he hasn't considered it if it meant having a chance to see Jason again.)

Danny would try and kill the Joker, and just like Batman, would have to be stopped. Danny nearly kills himself in the process because of his intense grief state making his powers fritz out and his ecto-levels rocket off the charts + he'd willingly using his powers if it meant killing the fucker that murdered his baby brother. Danny very, very fucking nearly goes ghost.

I am loudly pushing the batdad agenda i am loudly pushing the— DPxDC Prompt

“Woah. You look like shit."

Granted, that’s probably not the first thing Danny should be saying to the guy that just bit the curb, but in his defense; he’s not running on 100% right now either.

The man -- tall, towering, and broader than Danny is tall -- whips around on his heel, black frayed cape flaring out impressively. Danny would've whistled in appreciation, but he takes the time instead to wipe the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing the blood running from his nose across his cheek.

"Sorry." He blinks widely, not even flinching as the man with the horns zeroes in on him. "That was rude of me. I have a really bad brain-to-mouth filter; Sam says its what always gets me into trouble."

And she's not wrong either, per say. His smart mouth is what landed him in this situation -- with blood blossom extract running through his veins and cannibalizing the ectoplasm in his bloodstream. Thanks Vlad.

The man grunts at him; a short, curt "hm" that shouldn't make Danny smile, but he does because he's somewhat delirious and probably concussed. The man keeps some kind of distance, sinking towards the shadows of Gotham's alleyway like he dares to melt right into it.

If it's supposed to scare Danny, it doesn't work. Danny's never been afraid of the dark; he's always been able to hide himself in it. He blinks slowly at the mass of shadows.

"You look hurt." The shadows says, blurring together around the edges. Danny squints, and licks his lips to get the blood dripping down his chin off. Ugh, he hates the taste of blood.

"I am." He says, "My godfather poisoned me. M'dying." The agony of the blood blossom eating him from the inside out looped back around to numbing a while ago, so all he feels is half-awake and dazed.

"Hey," Danny stumbles forward towards the man, a bloodied hand reaching out to him. "You-- you're a hero, right? You're not attacking me; which is more than I can say for most costumed people I've met." Maybe it's a poor bar to judge someone at, but he's already established that Danny's not in his right mind.

The man makes no change in expression, but Danny realizes blearily that it's hard to tell with the shadows on his face. He stays still long enough for Danny to latch onto the cape -- stretchy, but almost soft under his fingers.

He looks up blearily into the whites of the man's eyes. "Can you help me? I don't-- I don't wanna die." Again. He doesn't wanna die again. He blinks slow and lizard-like. "I mean- I'll probably get to see mom and dad again, but I told them I'd at least try and make it to adulthood."

There's a clatter down the street, and Danny's ghost sense chills up his spine and leaves a bitter, ashy taste in his mouth. He immediately knows who it belongs to even before the deceptively gentle; "Daniel?" echoes down the way.

"Daniel? Quit your games, badger, Gotham is dangerous for children."

Danny's mouth pulls back, and blood spills against his tongue. "Please." He rasps, and grabs onto the shadow's cape with both hands. "Please. He's going to kill me. Please--"

"Daniel? Is that you?"

His lips part, dragging in air to plead with the darkness again. He doesn't need to, the whites of his eyes narrow, and the cape whirls around him before Danny can blink. Soon swaddled in shadows, the Night lifts him up, and steals him away.

[not-poignant]

Tumblr is full of writing tips posts. What is the most stupid and horribly wrong writing tip you've seen here? That possibly made you go 'ffc no, you should never do THAT'

Honestly I see so many horrible fucking writing tips that I often don’t know where to start.

But there’s one I see a lot which has persisted over the years on Tumblr, and would have like...genuine writing teachers responding like this:

And that’s any writing advice that suggests about four million other words you should use in place of the miraculous word said.

There was this trend (it’s thankfully on its way out) of posts that got absurdly Thesaurus happy to suggest a billion other words you could use in place of ‘said’ as though you were in a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story where characters would ‘ejaculate’ instead of speaking (yes really: ‘I can’t believe it!’ he ejaculated.)

Said is a marvellous word. It’s really an incredible, wonderful word.

The rule for using words like ��whispered’ or ‘taunted’ or whatever is (and this is not universal): if you can tell what the character is doing from the dialogue alone - use said. If there is no way you can tell tone from the dialogue, consider using something other than said to indicate tone. If you always have to use something else, your dialogue is probably not very good. And if you constantly use a word other than said because of I don’t know...personal vanity or whatever - that’s awesome man I can be guilty of it too, but sometimes it really means that you’re telling your reader the same thing multiple times in different ways and it can get jarring.

Said is a nice, invisible word. It’s mostly just letting people know who is character A and who is character B and who is speaking when. That’s all its for. Invisible words are great in writing! Why? Because they aid reading flow. The invisible words get your reader’s eye to the most important parts of your story.

Dean Koontz used to do this thing where he did great streams of dialogue and omitted all markers of who was speaking. Almost no one liked it, and almost everyone got confused by it. But it was a personal habit of his and he did it for about a decade before he was like ‘wait people really don’t like this‘ (to be fair he could do it for like three solid pages, like seriously imagine this:)

‘I don’t know’‘What don’t you know’ ‘I’m just saying this horrible thing we’re dealing with...’‘Yeah maybe we could do this to fight it’

FOR THREE PAGES IT GETS CONFUSING. (In short sections it can work). Sometimes how your character talks is not enough to get you through that clusterfuck. Enter the miraculous word ‘said,’ with a name or pronoun in front of it, that just acts as a gentle map for the reader, that goes ‘hey maybe you’re not reading this like it’s an examination for university, and to help you not get lost, here are some words you hardly have to notice to make sure you’re still involved in this story.’

Dean Koontz doesn’t really do this anymore, lol.

Anyway, honestly, I am kind of...against universal writing tips anyway, so any time I see a writing tip post on Tumblr, 9/10 I am usually doing this in response:

And it’s sort of... it’s a few things:

- I think a lot of these posts are written by highschoolers or first year university students who are sort of processing some basic writing rules (that in no way apply universally, culturally or even geographically to all - seriously if an American incorrectly ‘corrects’ my Australian grammar one more time I will reach through the internet and throttle them, we don’t use double quotation marks for our dialogue!) and do that by sort of regurgitating them with their own take and applying them to everyone. It’s awesome they’re learning, but you’re not in their class, and they are not your teacher. A lot of these articles are like post-educational-processing and not actually genuinely helpful writing advice.

- The universality of these tips tends to annoy me. It’s one thing to suggest that most fics on AO3 should have paragraph breaks - that’s basic functionality and accessibility, in the same way that it’s basic to put spaces between words. But it’s quite another to suggest that passive tense is always evil or adverbs are the devil. It’s simply not true. Fucking Pulitzer Prize winners have used both, lol. And they didn’t win in spite of doing these things. It’s one thing to say ‘it can be lazy to rely on this too much’ it’s another thing to say ‘no adverbs! Ever!’

- Sometimes it’s really really really easy to tell when someone has picked up Stephen King’s writing book. Also that book is super fucking ableist. Like most writing books, it’s centred in a whole lot of privilege. Also Chuck Palahniuk’s writing manifesto doesn’t apply to 98% of writers but thumbs up if you’re in the two percent.

- ‘How to write’ is an intensely personal process. Writing tips are like...idk, good to read, but in a light-hearted way. Sample often, discard just as often. Try before you buy (into it). Always think ‘do I know authors who have broken this rule and did I still find them entertaining?’ Almost always the answer is ‘yes.’

- I know a lot of professional writers and editors. Like, that’s my main ‘crew’ online (and in real life, even though I hardly ever see them, but if I see more than four people at once, it’s generally some of the big writing names in Perth and we’re usually bitching about something like how many small publishers can’t stand up to Amazon and not how that one author always uses ‘said’ too much pfft). On Twitter. On Facebook. On Dreamwidth. All I hear about every day is people dropping new books, getting nominated for awards etc. and here’s the thing about professional writers - they rarely share the same kind of writing tips you find on Tumblr, because they’ve learned that a lot of that stuff isn’t universal. 

Most of us are tired of Tumblr articles on how to write (don’t get me wrong, some of them are very very good, and Neil Gaiman has given lovely advice on Tumblr repeatedly - I don’t actually love his writing, but good god, I love him as a giver of writing advice lol since he’s not a homogenising dickbrain about it), most of us are tired of the grammar police, etc.

Anyway I do get impatient about it and it’s one of the few areas - there’s a reason why my ‘on writing’ / ‘pia on writing’ tag tends to feature very specific sorts of writing advice - i.e. focused on encouragement and motivation, over people saying ‘this thing should be universal’ when no, actually, it shouldn’t be.

And my way isn’t the right way either? And that’s why I don’t often share writing tips (though I think I could stand to do it more sometimes, maybe some people want to actually learn to write like me; I don’t recommend it personally lol). Like I break rules because I like the outcome, especially around length and passive tense and long scenes without ‘scene breaks’ and so on. But theoretically Cecilia Dart-Thornton’s The Bitterbynde Trilogy would be trash by some of these writing articles standards and it’s honestly one of the most sumptuous epic fantasy trilogies of all time and the purple prose works and it deserved the awards it won.

So imho, honestly, a lot of those articles can bite me, lol. But especially the ones where people are like ‘hey, have you considered not using ‘said’ and making everything 400 times harder for your reader, just to prove you can use a thesaurus???’

(PS: I talked to Glen about this, who is also a writer (and scriptwriter) and the thing he says he hates the most is: ‘write what you know.’ Totally feel that too.)

[brazenautomaton]

I'm no subject mattter expert but it looks that way to me from the superficial sources I have

most of the union "battles" appear to have both failed, and damaged support in the future. the unionized workers declare a strike for higher wages, the company doesn't fold right away, the union has no leverage and no backup plan and absolutely no incentive to make the owners want to re-hire them, they start breaking shit and attacking people, the cops or national guard or general hired goons are called in, there's gunfights, there's some "martyrs for the labor movement", and usually the union responsible loses so much support that it ceases to exist.

this was not every conflict but this looks like every conflict where the unions got violent. when they didn't, it was because the owners just got so fucking butthurt at the concept of a strike that they or their supporters just started shooting strikers before anything happened (or it was because the strike ended quickly). if the owners shot first, then the union support went way up.

and like this isn't even "oh the evil capitalists twist the narrative to say the laborers started the violence by defending themselves," since the things they were doing were not self-defence, they were destroying industrial equipment and getting violent with anyone who wasn't in the union. it's really funny reading wiki entries with an obvious bias and how they use the same kind of "exculpatory tense" that newspapers use when writing about a cop that shot someone. the Morewood Massacre page says the methods used were "strikes, protests, demonstrations," and then near the end of the article, admits "In March 1891, violence erupted as striking miners, some facing eviction and economic hardship, began targeting company facilities and replacement workers." it's very important that the violence merely erupted in the passive tense of its own accord, and you know that there was a very good excuse for these guys to go blowing shit up and attacking people.

of the Pullman strike, wiki says "On June 29, 1894, Debs hosted a peaceful meeting to rally support for the strike from railroad workers at Blue Island, Illinois. Afterward, groups within the crowd became enraged and set fire to nearby buildings and derailed a locomotive." the meeting was peaceful! it was just afterwards that some groups started burning shit down and flipping trains.

of the 1877 St. Louis general strike, a page that is part of the Wiki portal on socialism, it says "What began as the peaceful actions of organized labor attracted the masses of discontented and unemployed workers spawned by the depression, along with others who took opportunistic advantage of the chaos. In total, an estimated 100,000 workers participated nationwide." it was very peaceful guys organized labor is very peaceful it was someone else taking advantage of the chaos

the lesson of this is not that labor unions are evil (they are organizations subject to incentives like any other, not sources of moral justification), the lesson is when you go on strike you need some leverage to make the employer want to get you back. because if you don't have that leverage, your only option is to try and resort to violence, and you are starting a fight that in the long term you are not going to win.

seeing a communist angrily assert that of course Coca-Cola had death squads murder union organizers! is now making me doubt that it even happened, when I used to think it was true without thinking much about it

not because "everything a communist says is the opposite of the truth" but because the obvious undeniable evidence that had no other explanation he pointed to was that 24 "union organizers" died... over the course of 15 years.

if the case against Coke was "24 people who each attempted to be the individual leader of a labor union for one of your plants got murdered" then that would be incredibly suspicious, since there's no way that isn't "every single person who tried that." but there's also no way there's 24 people who tried that. if the case is "24 people, each of whom was involved in some fashion with a unionization attempt, were murdered over the course of 15 years, in Colombia and Guatemala, in the 80s and 90s," no that actually is not suspicious because there was a looooot of murdering by a lot of paramilitary death squads going on there for political and tactical reasons, and then the question of "was the coca-cola company actually involved or just the bottling plants it sold licenses to but did not directly command?"

but I can't actually find much information on this, just "everyone knows about the death squads working for coca cola" and details of one specific suit regarding the deaths of 3 people that was dismissed due to lack of evidence that coca-cola in the US was involved. I'm not gonn be all "this never happened it's commie propaganda" since I still find it plausible but I'd like to find more actual info about it