#a century’s worth of time??

[frogayyyy]

they went from "when i feel friendship for you, i feel ashamed" to their souls reuniting in death holding hands watching the sunset

[heybiji]

(and is that not reason enough?)

[tempests-bards-and-birds]

please god make the "three time winner of the best bard of mondstadt" one of the earliest pieces of evidence we got for the samsara without us knowing it at the time because it would be so fucking funny

[canisalbus]

For how much Machete is described by others as off-putting, he really is a beautiful dog. Does Vasco ever tell him so? That his eyes make him look earnest, his fur the most comforting shade of white like cream, the way his ears catch light like stained glass? If someone doesn't tell him so, he'd forever think he was ugliest duckling

I think Vasco definitely tries, sincerely and often, but Machete is very reluctant to accept compliments and positive feedback. Especially if it's about something as personal and innate as his looks.

[finelythreadedsky]

 On one level the book is about the life of a woman who is hardly more than a token in a great epic poem, on another it’s about how history and context shape how we are seen, and the brief moment there is to act between the inescapable past and the unknowable future. Perhaps to write Lavinia Le Guin had to live long enough to see her own early books read in a different context from the one where they were written, and to think about what that means.

-Jo Walton

[tenochconamor]

Shuri felt safe around Namor.

A year of her mom, her closest friends and family trying to get Shuri to open up about her grief was ineffective. However, after this King who everyone was afraid of, shared his life story, his history, his culture and his secrets with her she felt safe enough to share her complex feelings about her brother's death to him. Grief she had buried within for a year was laid bare, practically spilling her guts to him, in the face of Namor's own openness and vulnerability.

I think Shuri still longs for the connection she had with Namor even after everything that happened. She's more untethered than ever before and longs for the only person she ever felt that instant connection to but she can't go to him because it's not easy to forgive. So she goes to Haiti, the beach, as close to the water as she can and she cries.

[crystallllines]

Other approaches teach students methods for evaluating the credibility of news and information sources, in part by determining the goals and incentives of those sources. They teach students to ask: Who created the content and why? And what do other sources say? But these methods are relatively new and have not been widely studied.

How new is “relatively new??” Because I feel like I was already being prompted to do this back in 5th grade, all the way back in 2000!! but i may be misremembering. it was sometime between 2000 and 2004, i think

edit: i’m not trying to suggest that i think i have any refined bullshitting skills; quite the contrary, i feel like part of the reason disinfo makes me want to die is because i worry that i can’t, that i’m both too gullible and too cynical, and that both traits are leading to stagnation in the development of both me as a person and of my ability to be part of the world

edit 2:

They found that whereas historians and students were often fooled by manipulative websites, journalism fact-checkers were not.

lmfao i hate/love this

edit 3:

historians and students tried to assess the validity of websites and information by reading vertically, navigating within a site to learn more about it, but fact-checkers read laterally, opening new browser tabs for different sources and running searches to judge the original website’s credibility.

this makes sense! & not just because i feel somewhat comforted by the notion that my adhd brain’s pesky proclivities are actually helpful here! i can absolutely see how “reading vertically” would fuck with someone (but also, so could “reading laterally;” you can really spin out of control doing this shit). i can also see how reading pre-tabbed browsers and post-cell phones with browsers that don’t show new tabs on screen could inhibit bullshit checking. i also see how being exhausted could limit one’s ability to screen bullshit.

slightly related question: are historians as exhausted as i feel they must be all the time? not based on what i just read, just. as much as i love history, i feel like it makes you a tired person.

Age 14 is when kids often start believing in unproven conspiratorial ideas, according to a study published in September 2021 in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology.

Schoolkids Are Falling Victim to Disinformation and Conspiracy Fantasies

a part of me suspects that this is may have to do with being at an age when the desires to consciously develop a unique identity and to expand one’s understanding of the world coincide but that could just be me

[radiantmists]

man especially having now read the flashbacks i think about how hard xie lian always tries and how many people have told him that he tries too hard, that he never should have bothered and that doing so made things worse, or even more commonly just hating on him for not fixing things or being arrogant or whatever they think his problem is. and some of those people are probably even coming from caring places!

but before hua cheng, had anyone ever sat next to him and said, you tried and that's good, it matters that you cared, you did your best. nobody could have done better than you.

how badly must xie lian have needed that?

[y-rhywbeth2]

While replaying BG2, I had sudden moment of inspiration regarding a headcanon on how my Durge could be elven while tying it back to the first games (could also apply to half-elven). Throwing ideas around: Back in BG2 Irenicus tried to join the Seldarine by draining/fusing himself with the Tree of Life, an avatar of Rillifane Rallathil, claiming his divinity for himself and becoming a god... The act of draining the tree also had the side effect of killing and draining the life out of every elf in the city of Suldanesselar, but hey.

The second time he did this he had the stolen soul of a Bhaalspawn, which means that for a time the essence of Bhaal, the essence of an elven god, and the divine essence of Corellon/Elven-ness were all intermingled in an act of mass murder. Titans can be created entirely by accident; it could be possible for some of the divine essence of the Seldarine/Rilifane to be carried back to Bhaal, or even for Durge to have been born as a consequence of Irenicus' attack on the Tree.

There were these things, parasites formed from dark magic that the elves didn't recognise that Irenicus used to drain the essence from the tree (they were also kind of cute, imo, but that's beside the point): if those were, in some roundabout fashion, the "flesh" of Bhaal, slain, then reanimated and shaped into elven form by the stolen divine essence of one of the Seldarine... it would put Durge's birth in 1369, probably sometime in Kythorn (June-ish).

... It also sort of makes Durge part tree and maybe gives them two or three parents (Bhaal and Rillifane, and maybe Irenicus if you want to be cruel).

Also might make Queen Ellesime their half-sister or something (I'm not entirely clear on how she's related to the Leaflord, just that she's descended from him).

The Seldarine probably wouldn't be terribly comfortable with such a child existing (Sehanine might make an attempt at kindness as she does with Eilistraee and Shevarash, but when things don't fit into their ideal, things get very uncomfortable in this family). The elves wouldn't be keen on them either once/if they worked out what the infant was, what with them being both a reminder of a horrific and traumatic crime against them, and also a Bhaalspawn. They don't like those: "None of the elven forest folk want to be near me." - Charname, after being ushered out of Suldanesselar and out into a world where Bhaalspawn are being subjected to witch hunts, shortly after saving said elves and their city. Even if they are an elf.

[kavehater]

Chappel Roan saying she’s sad she’s demisexual and then there’s me being aroace as a whole like don’t you think I’m even more sad 😭

[emeraldotter]

I have normal fantasies about fictional characters.

[rocklain]

Betrań my beloved, he jus keeps on winnin.

[chiropteracupola]

curse of. thinking about the vampires instead of the assignmence again.

[citrine-elephant]

still waiting for leon's body to ship. and because i desperately want that particular model, i'm waiting a few more days before messaging the seller.

but my god am i feeling ANTSY

[clowndensation]

i'm literally constantly thinking about sam reid's "when does he change? how does he change? how does his character develop? progressively, as the episodes were coming in, i was realizing that lestat wasn't changing at all. he keeps going back to his same patterns" comment btw. because it's true. a cornerstone to lestat's character this season is that he is utterly, painfully static. which is fascinating, because that ironically makes him one of the most stable, reliable characters in the show, in spite of outwardly acting as one of the most impulsive, volatile ones. it's also the cornerstone to what makes him such a tragic character.

because lestat is aware, to a certain extent, that there's something about himself that leads to him being abandoned. he's alluring enough to captivate, sure, but fundamentally deficit in some undefinable area that will grant him genuine, committed love. he has a way about him, but he's a lot. he's not perfect. and his own imperfections terrify him, because whatever it is, he's sure that it's at the core of himself, that it's something he can't change. and so he chases after love by throwing the worst of himself at it - because if he can find someone who sees his ugliness and loves him anyway, he'll finally have a love that he can keep. and once he finds that love, he devotes himself to it. it can not disappear again, it can't slip through his fingers. it's his, and he won't allow it to be taken from him.

and it works - for a time. preternaturally charming, occasionally thoughtful, he is so incredibly easy to fall in love with. and then something changes. and it has to be an outside force, because he hasn't done anything. he's stayed exactly the same, he's been that same person who louis fell in love with, he's committed to this love with all of himself. he is seen and he is loved and he is wanted, and he won't let anyone or anything take this acceptance away from him. so he clings, and he lashes out.

and it all, ultimately, leads back to abandonment. he's so busy keeping louis in his life, he's so busy making sure nothing changes, that he can never allow himself to grow. because change is rejection. change is the acknowledgement that he'll never be enough, that there really is some part of himself so unacceptable, he'll never be able to be loved in his entirety. and it's not until those last moments of the show, when he finally acknowledges claudia as a person unto herself, with a will and autonomy of her own - when he sees louis agonizing over what has to be done, that he begins to understand his own role in their lives. there's a sort of acceptance that he's pushed them too far, that maybe it's not outside forces, or their own inability to accept him, that's at fault for where they've ended up. that maybe he has some responsibility in how all of this played out. it's the first time in the entire show where we really see that lestat could potentially accept that he's not the victim of things beyond his control forever barring him from love, but that he has some responsibility in how others see him. which could, eventually, lead to change.

[andi-o-geyser]

yeah just checked i’m still gay

bonus mystique being unable to sit straight: