#About Fate 2022

[archivedpaige]

About Fate 

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

2022 • Romance/Romcom 1hr 40m

Two strangers believe in love but never seem to be able to find its true meaning. In a wild twist of events, fate puts each in the other's path on one stormy New Year's Eve.

[vintagegirl01]

The Greatest Treasure

Merman Steven Grant x female reader

Summary: On a trip, you come across an amazing treasure that’s worth everything.

A/N: This is my first Steven Grant fanfic. Though this isn’t related to spooky season, I hope you all enjoy it nonetheless.

Though you know you should enjoy the monotony of knowing how and when things are going to happen in life, you can’t help but still yearn for more adventure and excitement. Hence why you decided to do something out of the ordinary and join your friends on a trip to the river to celebrate the end of the summer season despite your reluctance to tag along due to all of them having boyfriends to spend the time with.

Nevertheless, they all insisted that she come along with them to enjoy a little break from the usual routine of work and college. A week's vacation promised to be filled with fun.

Currently, you sit in a lawn chair reading a book under the huge blue canopy that her friends' boyfriends have set up for them. Your attire consists of an olive green two piece bathing suit with an unbuttoned white cover over you with your hair in a ponytail. While this is an outfit you normally wouldn’t wear out in public due to your body insecurities, you wanted to wear something that made you feel comfortable and confident in your own skin.

As you hear your friends giggling and playing in the water with their boyfriends, you can’t help but smile. Seeing your friends in happy relationships made you happy. Perhaps you will be lucky enough to have a man that loves you the way their boyfriends do.

——————————————————————

After a while of reading, you close your book and decides to head into the water to cool yourself off from the heat. Taking off your white cover, you are left in your bathing suit as you begin to walk towards the water. You continue to walk toward the water until it hits your midsection. You notice your friends and their boyfriends on floaties in the deeper end of the water as they can all see and ensure the other’s safety.

“You aren’t joining them in the deep end?”, a gentle but manly voice behind you asks.

You turn around and are met with a muscular chest in her face. You look up and are met with a beautiful looking man. He has curly dark hair, chocolate brown eyes, and has olive skin. The attire he wears is that of sky blue swimming trunks, leaving those who were around him to have a good view of his abs.

Noticing how long you have been staring up at the man, you make an attempt to answer him.

“I…I…I can’t swim,” you stutter. “Plus, I don’t want to be the one to be a third wheel… even though that’s kind of what I'm doing right now.”

The chocolate-eyed man smirks at her. “Want some company?”

You are a bit cautious about letting a strange man near. Though you found him handsome, that didn’t mean that his intentions with you were good ones. But that didn’t mean that they could be bad either. Perhaps he really did want to go out of his way to keep you company. For what reason, you had no clue.

Taking in your silence, the mysterious man speaks up. “You don’t have to accept. Just tell me you’re not comfortable with me and I’ll leave you alone. You have my word on that.”

You shake your head. “I could use the company if your offer still stands. My name is (y/n).”

“(Y/n)”, the handsome man tests out her name on his tongue. “It’s nice to meet you. My name is Steven.” The handsome man then puts his hand out for her to shake.

“Steven.” You smile. “I like your name. Are you here on vacation too”?

Steven smiles. “You could say that. Would you like to sit on that rock over there and talk?”

You nod eagerly as you and Steven make way to the rock and sit atop of it. For the next few hours, the two of you get to know each other until your friends tell you it’s time for dinner. Before you can invite Steven to dinner, you turn around to find the rock he was sitting on completely empty. Looking around, you find no sign of the brown-eyed man and almost believe your mind had made him up until your friends ask about him.

“He’s just a nice guy that I met today”, you blushed profusely.

Your friends playfully roll their eyes as they ask more about Steven. Once they are content with your answers, they go back to talking about their day as you think about Steven.

Despite his reserved nature, Steven was kind and a good listener. Also very into history as he told you about the history and legends regarding the river. All so interesting and entertaining that you hoped that today would not be the last time that you’d see him.

——————————————————————

In the coming days, you and Steven spend time with one another as if you two had known each other all your lives. In fact, he even taught you how to swim.

You can’t explain it but you have never felt comfortable being yourself the way you had been with Steven. Too bad this relationship of yours will have to end in two days.

A bit earlier than their usual time, Steven had asked you to come at the crack of dawn as he had something important to tell you. Even if you somehow got his number, the odds of you two keeping in touch seem slim. Still, you decided to keep your chin up and make the most of your time together as you make way to meet Steven at your usual spot.

Getting closer to the rock, you see Steven and call out his name. When he turns to face you, you are shocked by what you see. Instead of seeing two legs on Steven like you had for the last few days, you now see that in place of his two legs is one long emerald green tail.

“Steven… you’re a..a mermaid?” you ask.

“A merman actually,” Steven jokes as he scratches the back of his head.

You sit next to him but can’t contain yout shock. “How long have you been a merman?”

“All my life,” Steven responds.

You touch Steven’s cheek. “Why didn’t you tell me? I know it’s too soon… but I thought that our time together proved how much I care about you.”

For the first time since you two have met Steven, he looks flabbergasted by what she has said. Almost as if what she just said truly hurt him. “Oh (y/n), I wanted to tell you since we first met but I had to be extra sure.”

You look at the merman with concern.“Sure about what, Steven?”

“That we are mates,” Steven says matter of factly.

Your eyes go wide eyed.“Mates?”

Steven nods. “Mates,” he emphasizes. “Since the moment I looked upon you, something inside of me was wanting for me to approach you. And when you went out of your way to talk to me, I was a goner. ”

As you take all of this in at once, Steven takes this as a sign of rejection. “If you don’t want me… I completely understand. I…”

Before Steven can further explain, you lean in close to the merman to give his left cheek a kiss.

“I’d love to be your mate, Steven. Even though we’ve only known each other for a few days, I feel this connection with you that I’ve never felt with anyone else. Although, a part of me thought I was just imagining the chemistry between us… I’m glad to see that it wasn’t imaginary.”

At these words, Steven takes her hand into his own. “I’m not sure how we are going to go about this but I just know what we’re meant to be.”

This would be the first of many summers where you and Steven would meet with one another. For you and Steven were mates. Therefore, nothing could separate you both from each other.

[violet-traitor]

I was looking through my notes and found a dream I had a while ago that I think should be mentioned. It was some days after I had first played fe warriors which I played for like... 7 hours straight and kept joking about it until I saw a dream where I was Corrin in the scene where you choose your path in Fates and before I could choose I was woken up by my mother. In fates Corrin is woken up by flora.. or felicia I think. I was thinking about that for like the rest of the day at school it was so odd lmao

[randomnameless]

As someone who loves both Grima and Anankos I don't think Grima took Anankos's backstory at all, Grima's view if anything was stolen from Mewtwo. Lab creation, used in some matter, screw humanity. I would not be shocked if that ended up being the inspiration for the backstory FEH made up (because yeah they made it up but it's a canon property so it's canon backstory now) Mewtwo is one of the most popular Pokemon of all time and you can't deny making a god vs making the world's most powerful Pokemon doesn't have some parallels. And even so while I could see them inspired by Anankos betrayal compared to him nothing about Grima is tragic, he's just bitter. He's fully aware and lucid of everything (despite lacking ancient memories) he's pissed and wants everyone to suffer and it's also fun for him. Nothing much more to him despite how much my fellow Grima fans would like to argue; lab created angry betrayed murder dragon is all there is canonically. But as Grima was once meant to be a Loptous expy before he became FE Mewtwo there is now a lot in Awakening that doesn't make sense due to these retcons.

Anankos though! Oh Anankos is hella tragic following the theme of Fates really. A really good guy. Cared about his people did everything for them, loved them stayed longer than he should have and fell to degeneration. Basically got so old he got dragon dementia nothing like who he used to be due to this disease and since his functions are now failing he's full of rage all the time memories are warped he loses sight of who is around him and more, this rage causes him to go berserk and he's unable to understand why those he loved turned on him then he kills his best friend he keeps spiraling, going mad following and giving into his delusions about being betrayed, I wouldn't be shocked if he made up events that didn't happen in his messed up state of mind. Unlike Grima he is not lucid, it's true he also has a hatred of humanity because he was betrayed and his goal, like Grima is complete world annihilation but his betrayal wasn't a true betrayal either, and technically he betrayed humanity first but unknowingly because he is no longer the same person he was. Anankos is so far gone he's insane. Grima is perfectly sane and still wants complete world annihilation, either because he's angry or because he's just that bored (one of his lines also mentions wanting to start a war because he's bored) because of his betrayal he sees everyone as beneath him mere playthings. Anankos can't see anything he's gone *gone* all that matters is fulfilling his goal.

Sorry for rambling I just really love both of them and feel like calling one a rip off of the other isn't fully correct. Anankos is a crazy deep character (non corrupt Anankos when FEH it'd be a great mythic) and that's why I love him and I love Grima because of how little there is and it's fun to give him more with the little we have, I uh don't like the girl version because she's lets make her sexy and sell to horny men don't we have enough of those!! but the boy version is nifty

Hi!

FEH's canonicity is always going to be questionned, like, I'm the loser who will claim to the world Rhea bakes cookies because her FEH alt bakes them when her Fodlan iteration doesn't bake sweets - but it's all about the thin line, imo, between what in a fanfiction would be called IIC and OC.

Grima claiming that humans only worship him to later turn against him is... backed up by nothing, let it be in FE13 or FE15. Hell, in FE13, his human followers are, uh, sort of brainwashed to come to the dragon's tarble, and end up as his own snacks (he consumes their lifeforce à la Medeus?) - they didn't even had the occasion/chance to ask him something and then backstab him, no, they ended up in his stomach.

(something Loptry doesn't do at all, so what was the point of having this mentionned? "Remember Medeus? Here is the copy of what he did to those 4 ladies!")

In FE15 we got his backstory - where I agree with your mewtwo parallel (even if the franchise had no qualms stomping the "strongest pokemon ever" nonsense which had them release two megas for him - and even then, M-Ray, U-Necrozma and the later legendaries wreck him in half!) which is why they could have used this as a backstory : Grima was rejected by his creator who sought to end him because he "couldn't control him", he was rejected by the dragons (and maybe FEH could canonise the fact that Duma's visit of Thabes happening when Grima was conceived was just not a coincidence!) so in a traditional mindset, if the world hates him, he'll hate the world but with a special hatred for humans (GG Forneus) who "condemned him to live a life of hatred and despair"...

That's where the bitterness angle would come, but where I call this backstory the Anankos expy, it's because Grima's trusted and fellow humans never... turned their blades at him? Unless we're only talking about his Creator Forneus?

FE13's worldbuilding is wonky, but I thought Plegia was a nation where people worshipped him (which led Chrom's dad to war against them!) - so unless Grima suggests the First Exalt (Chrom's descendant) was one of his BFF who turned against them when he tried to do Grima-things which are, in FE13's canon, destroy the world and kill everyone, I really wonder where this "betrayed by humans" angle comes.

As you pointed it out, Anankos's story is more "tragic" because the man had been benevolent, but refused to "move to the astral plane" so he was degenerating, and humans being their human selves turned against him.

And doubly agree, maybe FEH's writers slapped this story on Grima to have someone, who still has some agency and isn't fully consumed by madness (not Anankos then) explain this backstory... FEH most likely didn't came up with Ascended!Heroes already - aka Heroes who are in the best versions of themselves (Idunn becoming a chicken again!) so they couldn't come up with an Anankos who, after being defeated by Corn and somehow surviving, explains his past and stresses the importance of bonds.

Instead, they had to craft something about Grima's backstory because between FE13!Grima wanting to destroy the world and its people in angry red capslocks and FE15!Grima being an eldritch abomination that was rejected by his creator at birth there was a gap they needed to fill and Doylist wise, since Anankos couldn't be released (what would be his lines if he's his insane self? - 2018!FEH couldn't have came up with kid!Soren as a unit lol) it was "okay" to copy part of his background and give to Grima - even if it doesn't make sense at all given FE13 - to explain the behaviour he has in FE13, since the mainline games didn't bother.

But doing so, as you said, retcons FE13.

Rhea baking cookies doesn't retcon FE16 or Nopes because the games (more Nopes than FE16 but that's player pandering for you!) showed/depicted her as someone who cares about people/plays with children when she can, but Grima blaming humans for shunning him when the humans who worship him got what they desired? What is he even talking about? He is the one who devoured his followers in FE13, as they were mindlessly marching to their doom, what/who is the talking about? Forneus? But Forneus never asked him anything, but he tried to get rid of him while he was still in his test tube.

At this point, I realise FEH!Grima is basically, especially as he is retcon to his canon games, a FEH OC lol.

Don't apologise for rambling lol, I always ramble!

I get the appeal of coming up with backstories and writing about characters who have no background, I spent years connecting dots between multiverse about Saias lol and Willy's basically became my OC since canon!Willy is just a name and a statue lol

But yeah, it's a damn shame FEH pretended to care enough about Grima to give them a new background/reasons/plot, but now only sees them as occasions to sell horny alts (Halloween!M!Grima had the same T&A pose than his female counterpart!) even if F!Grima has it the worst (my fwend @crushednugget made a beautiful edit of Rearmed Grima but with Valdar instead!).

But we know what FEH prioritises : horny > plot and relevance, remember Karla and her 3 alts?

[robertstuffs]

emma roberts as margot hayes in about fate (2022)

[isdalinarhot]

i choose to not speculate on kowt. i have like little ideas for little things like i have vague ideas of who i think is going to live and who i think is going to die but god fucking dammit i do not want to think about details. maybe if i dont imagine all my favorite characters having terrible things happen to them they wont happen and everything will be okay and dlainar will get to keep his body iand kaladin will stay h appy and fuckign adolin and shallan will get to be in love while both alive and everything will be okay please brand sand im begging you

[lovely-english-rose]

I posted 11,730 times in 2022

That's 2,314 more posts than 2021!

843 posts created (7%)

10,887 posts reblogged (93%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@neige-leblanche

@lovely-english-rose

@transexualcatboy

@nonbinarymikaela

@sevarix-blogs

I tagged 6,580 of my posts in 2022

Only 44% of my posts had no tags

#fire emblem - 1,735 posts

#kingdom hearts - 831 posts

#the legend of zelda - 477 posts

#felix's ramblings - 419 posts

#animals - 231 posts

#pokemon - 228 posts

#the owl house - 138 posts

#my art - 119 posts

#ninjago - 117 posts

#thanks for the ask! c: - 115 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#just like with how corrin is treated people think hes naive/sheltered bc he chooses to be kind despite how cruelly the world has treated hi

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

when its pride but your boyfriend is still missing

300 notes - Posted June 27, 2022

#4

"hi welcome to mcdonalds what can i get for you?”

“yeah can i get a deluxe quarter pounder with cheese?”

“absolutely, do you want the meal or just the sandwich?’

“uuuuuh hold on”

*fishes something out of my pocket*

“all might what do i do?”

"get the fries. youll need the energy in the coming days"

*stuffs it back in my pocket*

“uhh yes please the meal would be great”

654 notes - Posted August 4, 2022

#3

See the full post

2,057 notes - Posted April 10, 2022

#2

thank you sans and reigen for creating the perfect energy for today to happen

drive with all the photos, and youtube version

15,311 notes - Posted September 9, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

i may never recover

21,053 notes - Posted October 16, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[mceproductions]

Best of 2022 Music #1: Encanto Cast “We Don’t Talk About Bruno”

And our last entry gave us the catchiest buzz phrase of the year.

With Encantos signature song the Madrigal family gives us all the reasons within the mindset of the family’s black sheep Bruno.

And each gets their say.

All the fitting when the truth comes out later leading to well earned vindication.

This was everywhere for a good 3 months.

Until it’s Oscar performance was kiboshed (though thankfully 😅 overshadowed)

But this still earned the title of the years best song.

SUM 22: Mirabel gets the meaning behind her uncles abilities with a catchy ear worm and the best song from 2022

[claracivry]

I posted 6,963 times in 2022

That's 558 more posts than 2021!

200 posts created (3%)

6,763 posts reblogged (97%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@ancientstone

@smittyjaws

@veliseraptor

@lilshitwayne

I tagged 3,937 of my posts in 2022

Only 43% of my posts had no tags

#umbrella academy - 267 posts

#stranger things - 263 posts

#the witcher - 252 posts

#mcu - 212 posts

#eddie munson - 173 posts

#long post - 146 posts

#lol - 137 posts

#whump - 126 posts

#lotr - 110 posts

#the untamed - 105 posts

Longest Tag: 137 characters

#who wants to pay to a bunch of different places to get old stuff you had on free tv and the occasional nice series you can still download

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

562 notes - Posted May 3, 2022

#4

- It's been a long hard two weeks for Five

606 notes - Posted March 14, 2022

#3

783 notes - Posted October 19, 2022

#2

1,161 notes - Posted May 22, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

See the full post

3,474 notes - Posted November 18, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[jess-frances-b]

I posted 2,357 times in 2022

214 posts created (9%)

2,143 posts reblogged (91%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@jess-the-vampire

@thanksiloveyou

@thisisjohannasstuff

@aro-culture-is

@invertedfate

I tagged 2,357 of my posts in 2022

#shows - 864 posts

#the owl house - 491 posts

#life and nature - 487 posts

#faves i didn't choose - 301 posts

#spooky or creepy - 284 posts

#animals - 246 posts

#jess is doing things - 239 posts

#games - 178 posts

#fan works - 176 posts

#in trouble - 154 posts

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#i have this theory that he might release most of the monsters but brainwash them into worshipping him and chara as part of his ideal world

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Tags

I've decided to make a list of the main tags I use, which will also be the tags in this post. I don't know if they'll work on mobile or not.

jess is doing things - Posts I've made myself or have added to when reblogging.

things i've done - Anything creative that I've done.

abstract art - More specific than above, this is for my abstract pictures.

life and nature - Plants, animals, and anything else that doesn't quite fit in with the other two.

animals - More specific than above again, this is for animals.

flowers - Another more specific one, for flowers this time.

shows - Shows I've been watching.

films - Films I've seen.

games - Games I've played.

music - Music I like.

comics - Mostly webcomics or fan comics.

fan works - Fanfiction and fan comics I like and that sort of stuff.

faves i didn't choose - Posts involving characters that I became attached to without warning, basically just my favourites who I didn't get to choose as my favourites.

Some of these will overlap, and some of these will just be referring to them in some way and not actually about specific things. There are also other tags, but these are the main ones I'll publicly share.

4 notes - Posted March 15, 2022

#4

I usually draw these at the youth club I volunteer at, but it was closed last week and I won't be able to go this week, so I drew this at home.

4 notes - Posted July 21, 2022

#3

So as I said in my previous post, I peeked at a few spoilers just to assure myself that at least the kids would be alright.

Well, I did wonder if the episode would end with at least one person trapped in the Human Realm, but I wasn't expecting Luz to be one of them. But at least Hunter and Amity and Willow and Gus are alright. They'll have to hide their ears, though. I also saw a slight spoiler about a reference to Amphibia, but I didn't think it would be that blatant and imply that they're in the same world at the same time.

I wasn't really that surprised at Belos betraying the Collector. I mean, it's another magic being, so of course he would trick him just like everyone else. Seems like we were all wrong about Luz getting possessed, though, but he does still look very similar to her with a physical form.

I was a bit surprised that Kikimora knew about what happened to the previous Golden Guards. Did she know they were Grimwalkers too? Did she try to kill Hunter all those episodes ago because she was hoping Belos would give up, or that the next one wouldn't be in a higher position than her?

Some of us thought that Luz would make a deal with the Collector, but I wasn't expecting it to be King who made the deal. The way he talked reminded me a lot of a certain other character with just about the exact same voice who is known for making deals and using trickery.

The Collector is seriously powerful, though, he's basically a reality warper if he was able to move the entire moon that effortlessly. Hopefully everyone will be alright now. I'm not sure if Hunter not passing out was because of his lack of magic or out of sheer determination, but I was relieved it didn't come to that. Well, I wouldn't have minded if he'd recovered before the episode ended, that's part of the uncertainty I was worried about.

The end of the credits scared me a bit, though. It makes me think that Belos isn't completely gone...

6 notes - Posted May 29, 2022

#2

To tell the truth, I'm kind of disappointed that the Owl House and Amphibia are coming back at the same time. I like both shows, but I don't want one to overshadow the other. And since Amphibia is ending soon and even if there's a hiatus between the end of TOH S2 and the specials, that means we'll once again be left without new content once those seasons have ended, as opposed to having them come back at different times.

6 notes - Posted February 15, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Before I watch the last 2 episodes of this season, I would like to know:

Without spoiling too much, do any of the characters end up in a cliffhanger situation that we'll most likely have to wait months to see if they survive (or get brought back if they were temporarily killed in some way)? And if so, is it any of the adults, or are any of the kids included too? And again if so, is it Luz getting possessed by the Collector like a lot of us have predicted (I don't mind having that spoiled for me as long as I don't know how or why it happens)?

If any of the kids are included and it's not Luz being possessed by the Collector (we know she'll be alright in the end cause she's the main character), I might put off watching it for longer until closer to when the third season starts. It depends on what it is, though. If it's being incapacitated or imprisoned in any way (or temporarily killed as I mentioned before) then that's what I'm afraid of, but if it's simply being trapped in the human world or on the run or de-powered but otherwise fine and not in a seriously injured state then I can live with that.

7 notes - Posted May 28, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[yuumei-art]

Unreachable

Wandering mind, full of creation

Meandering lines, lost in elation 

Each stroke, I broke a little inside

Each fate, I hate. My will defied

I painted this in Feb 2022 about what it's like to be an artist with repetitive strain injury. In 2008, When I was 18, I made my first comic titled 1000 Words, it was about an artist helping a little girl with a broken family similar to my own. It received such positive feedback that I changed my Environmental Science major at UCBerkeley to Art major. Ever since then, my goal has been to tell stories with my art. Stories that are important to me. My next comic, Knite, was about a boy who wants to put the stars back into the polluted skies of China, my homeland. The comic after that, Fisheye Placebo, is a cyberpunk story about living in the age of technology, about fighting censorship and propaganda.

Unfortunately, I never got to finish Knite nor Fisheye Placebo. By the time I was 24, I was drawing day and night with no regards to my health. Not only did I get repetitive strain injury in my drawing hand, but my entire health suffered. My roommates had to rush me to the ER after fainting one night. I remember looking at my swollen right hand, my fingers like sausages, not even able to hold a pen, and just cry.

I've gone to the doctors and physical therapists. One told me I have Lupus (I do not), and another told me to put ice on it. More recently, I met a friend who happens to an amazing physical therapist and he was able to help me regain a lot of use of my hand. At my worst, I could only draw an hour a week, but now I am able to draw 2 hours a day. My hand is unlikely to fully heal, but I'm so grateful to regain what I have.

To my fellow artists who suffers the same, please know you're not alone. I can't promise that it'll get better, and it's cliche to say don't give up, but I want to keep hoping that no matter what the world throws at us, we will continue to make art.

[longlivedead]

final playtime for fate/stay night

[batshit-auspol]

I just spent some time scrolling through this blog and am suffering from sever laughter. Thanks so much for collating the countries craziest moments. One of my favourites is when Scott Morrison was in Hawaii while the bushfires where burning.

December 2019: As Australia's east coast is engulfed in the worst bushfires in living memory, rumours begin to circulate that Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison may have secretly fucked off for a holiday in Hawaii.

Keep in mind, this is what is going down in Australia at the time:

The Hawaii rumour is initially written off as a fringe conspiracy, because surely nobody could be that fuckin tonedeaf, and it was quickly forgotten about... until an Australian man visiting Hawaii UPLOADED A SELFIE ON THE BEACH WITH THE PM THROWING A SHAKA.

At which point all hell broke loose.

Overnight the formerly popular "Scomo" became the most despised man in all of Australia. Think "firefighters shouting out of their windows to news cameras" level of despised.

After about two days of radio silence and pretending like he was still at home running the country, the Prime Minister's handlers finally dragged him onto call with an Australian radio station, where he pinky promised to return to Australia as fast as he could in an attempt to calm things down.

Unfortunately Scott's empathy consultant (a real job) then had to watch Scott pour more gasoline on the dumpster fire by uttering the now famous phrase "Look I don't hold a hose mate" when asked by the radio interviewer why the fucking fuck the fuckhead wasn't fucking in Australia doing his fucking job during a massive fucking crisis.

Testing just how much worse things could get, Scomo then proceeded to NOT rush back to Australia as promised, instead attempting to complete the rest of his holiday, a fact that was exposed when a passerby snapped a picture of him still lounging on the beach two days later.

Eventually, holiday complete, Morrison did reluctantly slink back to Australia, and in an attempt to calm things down, he decided to pay a visit to a small town that had been destroyed by the fires.

Which was a big mistake.

Scomo still had not registered how absolutely and totally he had screwed the poodle with his Hawaiian beach vacation, and he walks into what is now taught in PR classes as one of the greatest examples of "what not do do in a crisis" in all of history.

Scotty from Marketing, as he is now dubbed by the nation, spends a painfully cringe-inducing hour wandering around a burned down town with TV news cameras in tow, having to FORCE PEOPLE TO SHAKE HIS HAND in what is some of the most awkward footage you will ever see.

At this point it's probably also worth mentioning that, before becoming Prime Minister, Scott Morrison's biggest claim to fame in politics was being the guy that was so far up the coal lobby's arse that he literally brought coal into parliament and waved it around, claiming it doesn't hurt people.

So when a protest was organised it turned out to be one big national fuck you to the Prime Minister, the likes of which the world has never seen before or since.

Needless to say, at this point Scomo's career was dead in the water, but thanks to the rules brought in to stop Australian political parties from knifing their leader every two weeks (a popular Aussie passtime) Morrison basically couldn't get fired until after the next election.

And so, when the election rolled around in 2022, we decided that was an opportune time to travel over to Hawaii to erect this bad boy tribute to the Prime Minister, on the very beach where Scomo had sat and drank margaritas that one fateful week in December as Australia burned (thanks to @chaser for funding the ticket)

[eelhound]

"The idea of reforming Omelas is a pleasant idea, to be sure, but it is one that Le Guin herself specifically tells us is not an option. No reform of Omelas is possible — at least, not without destroying Omelas itself:

If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms.

'Those are the terms', indeed. Le Guin’s original story is careful to cast the underlying evil of Omelas as un-addressable — not, as some have suggested, to 'cheat' or create a false dilemma, but as an intentionally insurmountable challenge to the reader. The premise of Omelas feels unfair because it is meant to be unfair. Instead of racing to find a clever solution ('Free the child! Replace it with a robot! Have everyone suffer a little bit instead of one person all at once!'), the reader is forced to consider how they might cope with moral injustice that is so foundational to their very way of life that it cannot be undone. Confronted with the choice to give up your entire way of life or allow someone else to suffer, what do you do? Do you stay and enjoy the fruits of their pain? Or do you reject this devil’s compromise at your own expense, even knowing that it may not even help? And through implication, we are then forced to consider whether we are — at this very moment! — already in exactly this situation. At what cost does our happiness come? And, even more significantly, at whose expense? And what, in fact, can be done? Can anything?

This is the essential and agonizing question that Le Guin poses, and we avoid it at our peril. It’s easy, but thoroughly besides the point, to say — as the narrator of 'The Ones Who Don’t Walk Away' does — that you would simply keep the nice things about Omelas, and work to address the bad. You might as well say that you would solve the trolley problem by putting rockets on the trolley and having it jump over the people tied to the tracks. Le Guin’s challenge is one that can only be resolved by introspection, because the challenge is one levied against the discomforting awareness of our own complicity; to 'reject the premise' is to reject this (all too real) discomfort in favor of empty wish fulfillment. A happy fairytale about the nobility of our imagined efforts against a hypothetical evil profits no one but ourselves (and I would argue that in the long run it robs us as well).

But in addition to being morally evasive, treating Omelas as a puzzle to be solved (or as a piece of straightforward didactic moralism) also flattens the depth of the original story. We are not really meant to understand Le Guin’s 'walking away' as a literal abandonment of a problem, nor as a self-satisfied 'Sounds bad, but I’m outta here', the way Vivier’s response piece or others of its ilk do; rather, it is framed as a rejection of complacency. This is why those who leave are shown not as triumphant heroes, but as harried and desperate fools; hopeless, troubled souls setting forth on a journey that may well be doomed from the start — because isn’t that the fate of most people who set out to fight the injustices they see, and that they cannot help but see once they have been made aware of it? The story is a metaphor, not a math problem, and 'walking away' might just as easily encompass any form of sincere and fully committed struggle against injustice: a lonely, often thankless journey, yet one which is no less essential for its difficulty."

- Kurt Schiller, from "Omelas, Je T'aime." Blood Knife, 8 July 2022.

[finnickodaiir]

We lie awake in love and in fear and in turmoll and in tears. We stare at walls and drink until they speak back. We twist in our self-made cages and pray that we aren’t — right this minute — about to make some fateful life-altering mistake. This is a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams. The floors we pace and the demons we face. For all of us who have tossed and turned and decided to keep the lanterns lit and go searching. Hoping that just maybe, when the clock strikes twelve… we’ll meet ourselves. See you there. Midnight sharp.

Midnights (October 21, 2022) (insp)

[elkian]

I’ve noticed a lot of game art seems to be converging on some Perfect Inoffensive Common Denominator and it’s. Bizarre. Like not entirely unexpected, but opening a game to find that the most recent update took all the quirky, unique character designs and basically sandblasted them to be smooth, empty, and unfeeling is just. It feels like an inescapable tide of AI-computed consumerism is crashing over design right now.

This is especially prevalent in shovelware app games (see also: the ads that now slam 14 bad ad tropes together into an incomprehensible mishmash of conflicting concepts that project not merely no information to the watcher, but out right negative amounts of information), but they aren’t alone. I know anime is going through its own version of this, and it’s strange to see new game characters announced and find out that they’re for what was one of my favorite series, but I had no way of guessing that because they look exactly like every soulless beautiful anime person gacha characters we’ve been flooded with.

I’m not blaming creators for trying to capitalize on what looks to them like an industry trend, but it’s deeply frustrating and I think it’s part of what paved the way (and/or was paved for by) the whole AI learning art debacle and NFT nonsense. It’s as if they’re trying to hit the Turbo button on the evolution of modern art trends and find The Most Marketable Designs by feeding 10,000 successful designs into a system and faithfully reproducing what comes out.