#Iron Formation

[geologyjohnson]

Banded Iron Formation

Here's a photo of a beautiful 3.4 Ga banded iron formation from the Barberton Geo Trail, South Africa. It's heavily weathered, but there was still some green underneath the oxides. Exposure is ~3m high. #Geology

[celestefox13]

.... Anyone else flashback to the banters between Solas and Bull in Inquisition where they played a mental chess game and Solas won because of a play with a pawn? And how he slowly inched that pawn across the board during those banters? (Like he positions Rook and helps slowly "inch" them across the "board" to checkmate the Gods?)

Or about the banters between Solas and Sera about the Friends of Red Jenny, and how he couldn't really wrap his mind around the group's entire goal just being help in small ways without any significant goal truly in mind? (Like how he couldn't wrap his mind around facing, accepting, and processing regrets the way Rook does to escape the Fade prison because he's always thinking too big picture and grand purposes)

Or, perhaps one of the most interesting, the banters between Solas and Varric about Orzammar and how it is in the current time of the games? (And how all the questions Solas asks echoes or points to both what happened to the Elvhen empire and what he intends to do to try to fix his mistake?)

Or the banter where Viv asks if Solas enjoys seeing himself as the villain? And their banters discussing the Circle, and Viv's political prowess, and how "in another age" she "would've ruled an empire?"

Or banters with Dorian about spirits and magic, and how they are used in Tevinter? And on slavery in general? (And how those conversations are a very big part of Dorian actually thinking about the slaves in Tevinter in a meaningful way)

Or with Cassandra about the burdens of leadership and how Cass stepped aside from leading/making decisions for the Inquisition as a whole cause she recognized/felt she wasn't the one to wield such power? Or the one where Cass wonders if the Archdemons are "pets" to beings who no longer exist?

Anyone else thinking about the banters that weren't with Cole about spirits and how to "ground" one's self in the real world, or with Blackwall about being men that have seen war and done cruel things and have had to live a lie until caught in the lie? But were more about the nuances of lives lived and currently being lived; and the status quo and how it was vs how it is vs how it maybe should be; and the very core of his being and true beliefs and how he could find some kind of echo of each with the members of the Inquisition, reflecting and foiling in turn?

Just me? Cool, cool, cool

[timbit-robin-art]

I am mildly obsessed with these guys.

[cowboylikeyouu]

the stupid ass pwp car sex poolverine oneshot i wrote three days ago already has more kudos than the ongoing 14 chapters avengers twitter fic i dedicated two years of my life and way too much of my time to, and i really don't know how to feel about that

[gcballet]

Just saw someone complaining about the Newhart ending from 0611 being mockery of people who ship Nandermo and frankly I can only imagine that account is someone who's under 20 bc that is not what mockery/rejection of queer ship fans looks like. You were in preschool when BBC's Merlin came out, you don't know. S6 and finale spoilers below.

The point of the Newhart parody ending was to provide an ending for fans who just wanted WWDITS to stay a goofy status quo sitcom. It's answering the black and white footage of the vampires in the 1950s. The sitcom status quo is a famously really hard trope to work with. The Simpsons is literally still struggling with it - decades of skilled comedy writers have never defeated it. It's a commentary on being satisified by the media we consume. The vampire can never fully be satisfied, no matter how many lives she consumes. The status quo can never be broken no matter how many episodes it attempts.

The 1980s trope of 'it was all a dream' happens in The Bob Newhart Show, it happens in St. Elsewhere, it happens in Dallas. They aren't mocking a queer ship, they're mocking sitcoms and how they've been hamstrung by format in terms of the story they can tell. Assume they did pursue Nandermo unambiguously, onscreen. It would be legitimately too dark for a sitcom. Or conversely, too hopeful for a documentary.

The other generic format choice restricting them is the documentary, because everything the characters do in the show is them being watched by a group of strangers with film equipment. None of their behaviour is wholly real. The entirety of the finale is Guillermo realising his behaviour will change when the crew leave. His behaviour has been influenced by the presence of cameras, and it will happen again. For the first time in six years, he's going to experience actual privacy, and there will be scope for him to express things he has deliberately suppressed with the cameras on. In the first episodes of S5, we saw him get increasingly frustrated with the crew, calling them vultures, as they tried to get the story on what happened with Derek. He's ready for his privacy back, and space to change, but the vampires live by sitcom rules. They aren't prepared to change, or at least, he isn't confident about it.

What We Do In The Shadows (2019-2024) is restricted by two specific genres and their conventions, and the first two 'endings' - the dream sequence and the switching off the cameras - represent exiting both of those genres before any significant radical moves can be implied for Nandermo.

It's a sitcom, therefore the central couple must be in perpetual will-they-won't-they (Friends), the gays must be physically chaste (Modern Family), and the status quo must be maintained (The Simpsons). Once the sitcom is ended via the Newhart ending (which positions Guillermo and Nandor as a married couple, that's not a small thing at all), the documentary tropes can close out.

Documentary tropes are a little harder to pin down, but generally the story should end with Guillermo truly moving on and leaving in a poignant and somewhat tragic way.

Guillermo's narrative thread throughout the documentary version of the show is about his identity and relationship with Nandor. He gives the cameras a big show of finally saying goodbye to Nandor, going on to be a new version of himself, and waits until the crew begin to derig before acknowledging again that a documentary is performative, and he intends to continue their relationship. The documentary format means intimate moments must be captured. When the documentary ends, the intimacy may be private. That's why we don't get a Nandermo kiss. It's allowed to be private now.

Guillermo is sad throughout the finale, yes, but I would argue he's actually mostly stressed, because on one level he understands that the show must commit to one of two trope endings. The sitcom, the repeating lives of the vampires where nothing matters and you can be hypnotised to believe there was nothing deep about it. Or the documentary, where he is forced to tragically leave forever, having learnt a valuable 16 year lesson, perhaps meeting again for a 'where are they now?' Twenty years later.

He thinks he has to choose in under an hour, between the endless sitcom cycle the vampires find natural, or walking away with the humans who made the documentary to capture something ephemeral and temporary.

They do both, and then Nandor and Guillermo get what is clearly the ultimate ending. It's not formatted in such a way that you choose between endings. They're not alternate endings, they're subsequent endings. It doesn't have multiple endings like Clue, it has multiple endings like The Return of the King.

And maybe Guillermo and Nandor don't kiss on the mouth and declare their love for one another, but the camera crew is still leaving the room. What they do do is agree to stay together and work together on something to make themselves and/or the world better. Then Nandor invites Guillermo to share his pseudo-bed and disappear into a private space he has created in secret for the two of them. Even phrased matter of factly that's romantic. Someone flippantly called it 'the gays getting sent to super hell' and wow way to deliberately miss the point. Nandor never follows through on big projects, but he built a miles deep tunnel under the earth so he and Guillermo could at last be alone away from a huge documentary crew and roommates with super hearing. That's beautiful. They don't owe you an onscreen kiss to prove they're in love. They (Nandermo and the show producers) don't even owe you representation, and if you think otherwise, you've not bought into the premise of the show. You are the voyeur watching the documentary, the fan watching the Ross and Rachel (Nandor and Guillermo have been compared to them by the cast).

The whole point of the endings is that they moved Nandermo outside the unreality of TV genres. Not a sitcom will-they-wont-they, not a tragedy within a documentary, just two weird guys in a coffin in a hole in the ground, doing whatever they want because nobody is watching and judging.

They didn't make Nandermo canon, they made Nandermo real.

[eldritch-sanctum]

I’m really showing how old I am.

Yeah you can argue that it’s not exactly “would” on that last one, but “has killed”.

[americaisdead]

hawthorne, nev. november 2024

© tag christof

[cer-rata]

TW: racism

I think the way that comic book media has uncritically pushed anti-Arab racist propaganda (among other kinds) for decades upon decades is an important thing to acknowledge. Like it's not just a couple of bad apples here and there, it's always been pervasive. So many stories, so many villains, so many Arab coded fake evil countries. That kind of thing desensitizes people, dehumanizes entire groups. The politics of media designed for young men and boys (and not just them but for years that was the only audience that mattered, thanks sexism) has consequences.

Seriously, what was this:

As far as I'm aware this never even got an explicit retcon.

I was a little Muslim boy in the mid 2000s reading a Death in the Family because I wanted to know what happened to Jason Todd, and I didn't understand the depths of the propaganda that was being fed to me. I was so desensitized to hearing about terrible things happening in the middle east, and evil terrorists that I didn't question it. And my parents talked to me about what was going on and how it was wrong. But I was still a little kid and I loved Batman and I wasn't at the point where I could really look at the narrative critically, to realize that the authors have worldviews that are biased. I don't think I even grasped that different people wrote the characters. Iran electing known super-terrorist-serial killer-baby eating clown The Joker to represent them because he understood their values is yes, notably crazy, but most of this stuff isn't so loud and obvious, and we didn't leave it in the 80s. Just look at what happened to the depiction of Talia and Ra's post 911 and how they progressive became less human. So just think about the generations of kids reading this crap who had no counter messaging at all. Where does that leave their empathy?

I'm not saying that everything we're seeing is the fault of comic books, that's stupid and reductive and insulting to the complexity of the reality. But what I'm saying is that a lot of these narratives are actively complicit in the kinds of inhumanity we're seeing. Marvel thinking it's appropriate to throw Sabra into a movie in current day is a glaring transgression but it's not some kind of strange outlier. Lots of those films are actively funded by arms of the American military, just look at Captain marvel and Iron Man. And if anyone likes imposing an agenda onto the narrative, it's the military. A lot of this is baked into the fiction, and we owe it to ourselves and others to actively contend with what that means.

I dunno I'm just mad, and disappointed and maybe a little guilty that it took me this long to really realize the full state of things. I spent a lot of time blindly consuming. Like these books were created to be aspirational, to show good people trying to make a better world. But as always happens when art is completely beholden to money, they still serve the politics of the ruling class at the end of the day.

[teapetal44]

All For One should have stayed on the sidelines as a character after Kamino. His evolvement in everything after that significantly weakens the story. Building up Tomura as his protégé, framing him as the next symbol of evil, and then pulling the rug under everyone’s feet, is the worst writing decision Hori has ever made. In concept, All For One failing at passing the torch to Tomura is good, because it directly  parallels All Might and his mentorship to Izuku. Unlike All For One, Toshinori was aware the younger generation needed to take up the mantle. All For One is a selfish and controlling person, it makes perfect sense for him to be unable to give up his power to someone else. But in execution it falls apart the moment All For One continues to force himself upon the narrative, continues to serve as the big bad. All For One’s inability to pass the torch and Tomura as a main antagonist can co-exist without weakening the themes of the story.  

Like, imagine how cool it would have been if All for One was destroyed by Tomura after he tried taking control over his body and mind. Tomura realizes his master is holding him back from achieving his full potential and his goal, the thing he literally lives and fights for. Triumph over his master would be Tomura’s final step to becoming the new symbol of evil and his self-liberation. Then, he would truly be free of everything holding him back. AFO, the puppeteer, the man always one step ahead of everyone else, would be conquered by the very same person he molded – he planted the seed, but at last, what grows is out of his control. In a sense, he would be punished by the story for failing at passing the torch and Tomura would be cemented as the final antagonist, and his journey would feel satisfying.

All though, I see why Horikoshi didn’t write it like that – cause that would require giving Tomura actual autonomy as a character. Something he actively avoids doing every chance he gets. It’s easier to have a character who is crafted to be evil by one powerful bad man before he was even born, than to portray an abused child failed by a fundamentally corrupt society that values consumerism over actually helping those in need, who ended up in the hands of the powerful bad man because the child slipped through the cracks of said society. MHA conveys to the viewer that there are no bad systems, only bad people within the established systems.

Tomura couldn’t own his conception, nor his heroic goals, not even his abuse. Nothing ever happened to him because of society as a whole or because life is cruel and merciless. It happened because Anime-Satan said so.

[spark-river]

MC: You know, I'm feeling weirdly distracted today.

Belphegor: You're supposed to be dead!

[geologyjohnson]

A cute little billion year old coated grain that looks like a sprout. The grain is made of layers of Fe-clay that grew on the sea bed. Normally these grains are smooth but mine have unusual textures. I'm trying to figure out how these things formed. This little grain is about 1 mm across and is hosted in a shadow water sandstone.

[stromuprisahat]

Qin Zheng @ Zhang Yizhi: “Questionable move, asking me to trust you as you threaten my life.” Wu Zetian: “You do that to me basically every week.” Qin Zheng: “Not the time!”

[ishimondoevents]

Here are the prompts. Thank you to everyone who contributed ideas to this! The list will be written down below the cut with some ideas for those who want a little elaboration, a little help brainstorming, or simply understand how loosely prompts can be interperted!

Please make sure to check out the RULES AND F.A.Q. so we can have a smooth week.

July 14th: Family / Dates

July 15th: Promise / Sickness

July 16th: Roleswap / Seasons

July 17th: Competition / Future

July 18th: Talentswap / Gifts

July 19th: Confessions / Soulmates

July 20th: Free Day*

* For the Free Day, you are free to use a prompt that you hadn't used on one of the previous days if you would prefer a specific prompt to follow.

Remember— these are just ideas to help with brainstorming, you are not limited to interpreting the prompts in just these ways. 

Family: You could choose to interpret this as being in relation family members (canon or head cannoned) for a scenario like meeting the in-laws; or them building one of their own (with pets, fan kids, v3 kid AUs, etc). Another angle could be a reflection on their own childhoods, with a focus on their family life/dynamics to tie it back to the prompt.

Dates: Quite a few options to go with, off the top of my head: first dates, blind dates, double/group date, fake dating, or even a study date lol. This could also be interpreted in the sense of important dates like birthdays, anniversary, etc.

Promise: This one might be a tad bit easier on the writers since all you'd need to really do to meet the prompt is throw in one 'promise between men', but you can definetly get creative with it. You could go a more canon route of 'I'll build your house bro' or 'We'll get out of the killing game alive' to anything else you could think of, big or small— perhaps even broken promises (as serious or silly as you'd like, e.g. 'you promised you'd stop speeding')

Sickness: Just a few ideas besides a literal cold— lovesickness (figurative or more literal like a hanahaki AU), a despair disease scenario, or a mental health day.

Roleswap: Anything that generally swaps the canon role would apply here. So Protagonist AUs, Mastermind AU, Survivor/Future Foundation AUs would all be applicable here. Remnants of Despair AUs may also apply, see the elaboration given in the Talentswap section.

Seasons: Take this as liberally as you'd like. Focus on one season or all; focus on seasonal activities like going to the beach, a seasonal school vacation; or a seasonal holiday/festival, just to offer a few different ways you could try and meet this prompt. 

Competition: With how competitive these two are, hopefully this won't end being too restrictive. Be this between the two of them, one rooting for the other for sports/other extracurricular activities, or a double date scenario with someone as competitively spirited. You could also stick to more canon moments for reference like the Sauna Scene or the race between Mondo and Daiya.

Future: You could do something with Futuristic themes like cyborgs/androids/etc. Or more broadly approach the prompt with discussions of the future (v3 talentplan style), or in settings where they're older (be that 30 or 80, however you wish to interpert it). 

Talentswaps: The difference from the roleswap Is that the former implies the talent isn't changed, just the role within the story. A talentswap may change several factors, but most notably the talent. So whether you're swapping just the talents between the THH cast or swapping game premises as well (e.g. v3 au with SHSL Inventor Oowada), all of that would be better suited here. Remnants of Despair AUs could go here if it's a talent swap that includes SDR2's general premise, but if the talents were to remain the same AND the concept to be (for example) that Junko chose Class 78 over 77 to brainwash, then that could fall under a Roleswap instead.

Gifts: This should hopefully be easier to achieve as a prompt, but this could be around any kind of celebration involving gifting (birthdays, holidays, etc.), or just a general occasion of wanting to get a gift. Maybe focusing on having difficulty with finding a present, etc.

Confessions: This could be anything from a love confession, or a completely innocuous thing like— oops, I’m the asshole that has been in your parking spot bc I’m dyslexic and thought it was mine meet cute(?). Perhaps it could be one of them receiving a love confession and the reaction around it.

Soulmates: Since I know there are quite a few ideas people have come up with over the years for soulmate AUs, I think this one should also not be too difficult (hopefully).

Here are four lists I got just from googling, should you need a few ideas about what you might do: 

https://www.tumblr.com/r-evolve-art/144380748003/

https://www.tumblr.com/ausforsoulmates/190255248494/

https://www.tumblr.com/thegeminisage/94680598838/

https://www.tumblr.com/creativepromptsforwriting/647547186533531648/

You could also go more straightforward with red string of fate concepts for soulmates as well, or just the idea of soulmates, not necessarily a soulmate AU if none speak to you!

[crowned-clown-rising]

You either die young or live long enough to become married by the power of fanon, a tour:

Murder husbands

Iron husbands

Superhusbands

Ineffable husbands

Space husbands

Time husbands

Heartrender husbands

Honorable mentions:

Space boyfriends

Pirate husbands

Missed opportunities:

X-Husbands

Please?? The pun?? You know because they are x-men?? And they have a beach divorce?? Then they remain married while archenemies their whole lives??

[charmac]

I love how Glenn talks about his journey with Dennis in this episode in TASP, specifically inspired by this scene:

"Season three really was the year where I feel like I found the character... Just sort of letting myself be a little bit more insane and crazy and unhinged and just weird. Just making weird choices... Let's just see how despicable and egotistical and awful and narcissistic and predatory can we make this character and still have it be funny.”

This scene has always felt so purposefully strange, predatory in Dennis’ language yet absurdly dismissable in Ingrid’s reaction and response. Clearly Glenn’s getting weird with it (in delivery) to make the scene funny.

So what’s crazy interesting to me is this claim in TASP that Glenn improvised the majority of the predatory language here (8:34-9:40 if the timestamped embedding doesn't work):

Which, by the way, is a complete lie (okay, fine, let’s say.. misremembering):

Because it’s scripted almost word for word. RCG speak about how they were scared to really go there knowing how it would come off, they claim they were nervous and uncomfortable “improvising” the lines the day of shooting, yet they clearly scripted it that way, intended language going into the scene (scripted by Charlie and Glenn, I might add).

Sunny is written as a comedy, intended to be funny, and it worked because it was funny despite the lines Glenn had to deliver. And why is that?

In some way, it is partly how they scripted (/directed) Ingrid as unfazed by Dennis’ words. She doesn’t see him as a threat and therefore his words bounce off as pathetic and strange, even when they’re alone in an office; she's not threatened so the audience isn't alarmed. But obviously the reason for her responding like this (notwithstanding her knowledge of Dennis from high school) is the way Dennis holds himself and the way he speaks.

His mannerisms are clearly misaligned, he’s saying words he knows(?) are threatening, but coming out of Dennis' mouth with these inflections, with his intent being to sell her his dress designs, it's almost nullified. He's just saying what he thinks gives him power, but his words mean nothing when Ingrid can clearly see through them. (And Meg speaks on this, too, which is awesome)

But they didn't just throw in Dennis speaking like a predator on the day of filming, thinking "ok let's do one take like this to push it," they wrote Dennis very clearly (knowing the payoff of the episode), with Glenn likely having a good idea of how he was going to play it. How (and I'm sorry but I really cannot find a better word to describe it) faggy Dennis comes across here is what disarms everyone, and since this predatory language was scripted, that is what was needed in Glenn's intention, or it just wouldn't be humourous.

And Charlie very helpfully assures something foundational here,

This is playing hard on Dennis' insecurities.

And, all that considered... When they're talking about Glenn getting weird with it, when they're talking about the choices he made in this episode to make the language he's using funny as opposed to straight-up scary, he says:

This is where Glenn found the character—insecurities included. In order to minimize the impact of the words Dennis is using, in order to make the predatory language creepy yet easily dismissable to Ingrid, it had to be funny in some way. And he achieves that by deciding to write/play Dennis clearly, insanely flamboyant.

Ironic, isn't it?

[goatwithaplan]

SMT 2005 posting carries on