#also sorry in advance all excerpts will be screenshots

[youngpettyqueen]

yayyyyyy I get Quark and Odo's brand of insane yayyyyyy

[dearweirdme]

Hi Rain, how are you doing?

I wasn't part of the fandom or into Taekook around April-May last year, but last night I came across some screenshots of tweets on a Taekook shipper Telegram channel. The Twitter account that posted them has since been suspended (Twitter account: o*f_s*a*s*a*e*n*g).

I know these are just some tweets, and with the account being suspended, I'm not sure if this falls under "invasion of privacy" or not because I wasn’t in the fandom at the time, I really don’t know what happened and I'm here to find out. In my opinion, it's harmless, but I understand that I could be completely wrong. However, since I trust you and value your judgment more than any Taekooker on this or any other platform, I wanted to ask for your opinion. Have you seen or heard about them in real-time? Are they real? Are they fake?

If you think discussing this might be problematic or could get you in trouble, please feel free not to publish it.

Thanks so much for everything, Rain!

Tweets👇

“May 24, 2023: Company of partners want to drag Jungkook into a fake relationship scandal, don't believe the rumors, all this is spread by the fans of the other member from the chat, so that at the time of the release of his solo album, the Chinese fans will leave him. Don't leave him because of the rumors. Like Taehyung.

Date Unknown: Photo of BTS Taehyung kissing a human whom he loves is in the hands of a very powerful person, the photo was taken in the central Mediterranean between Sicily and North Africa (Google will give information). No one except sasaeng (from people who are not close to the artists) saw this photo, 2018, at dawn (when the sun was rising) this photo was taken, if the decision had not been made then, then in 2018 BTS really would not have returned—this story will have a happy ending, for both sides.

Date Unknown: Don't take it as a "test" it's a "work" in this industry they are not the first year. they know everything and discuss in advance with their superiors and, of course, real partners, no one cries into the pillow, this is business.

April 24, 2023: Don't forget to text the idols hiding in the closet that you love them, because a little bit of freedom comes at a price, especially on social media where fans are waiting.

April. 25, 2023: Soon you will see the intervention of the company and the already hackneyed scenario

May 18, 2023: Wait for a post from a person who is not indifferent to this situation, it doesn't matter even if it's a song or just an excerpt from a book, you will understand everything

May 18, 2023: Before telling a lie, he told you the truth, or rather showed HIS truth, - the honor of the family does not compare with love, there are consequences for every sip of freedom."

Hi anon!

I don’t mind answering (sorry for being late to respond though), I’m just probably not the most up to date on this. I’m not on twitter much. The place is too much for me. So, I’m also not too up to date on stuff like this, also because I don’t trust anything that comes from anonymous sources.. that basically also goes for things that seem in favor of tkk being real.

Is it possible that there’s people who know them that spill information anonymously? Yes it is. We have no way of knowing though. There’s a lot of accounts everywhere who will try and look as if they are in the know just to get fandom attention. Laat year we had that crazy Taennieisaflop account, at this moment there’s a Jkk account on Tumblr trying to convince people Jk and Jm are their twinflames, there’s saseangs who want attention… the list of people in this fandom doing things for attention is just crazy long. People saying things for attention is just plain untrustworthy, so I don’t pay much attention to it.. and it is never something I base my thoughts on.

Sorry for being useless 😊.

[fatehbaz]

neotropical oaks?

Yea, disappointing that the map that the Savanna Oak Foundation uses to display oak savanna distribution in North America doesn’t include the tropical/Mesoamerican oak landscapes. That organization tries to explicitly distinguish between oak savanna and oak woodland, but the exclusion is still not-fun since Mesoamerica is famously the site of the highest biodiversity of oak species. And some fresh, new research (declared “the most comprehensive ever”) from July 2020 looked into the biodiversity of neotropical oak.

Oak savanna/woodland discussion seems to be ubiquitous in both formal research and “citizen science” in the Midwest and Great Lakes. And oak discussion also seems ubiquitous in California, obviously, with the oak being a central character in so-called Mediterranean California ecology. But highest local oak biodiversity is in Mexico and Central America.

The map does display northern Mexican oak savanna in the Sky Islands and northern Sierra Madre Occidental, I guess. I’m a big fan of the Sky Islands because it hosts some of the world’s most dramatic altitudinal zonation (extreme transitions between desert valley floors and moist forested high-elevation slopes) and the ecoregion provides a habitat corridor for neotropical species like jaguar, ocelot, and Boa constrictor (all more associated with South America in popular consciousness) to extend their distribution towards and very close to (and sometimes, into) the US border.

But oak plays another role in why I’m such a fan of the region. Because the pine-oak woodland of the Sky Islands and northern Sierra Madre Occidental is/was the home of two superlative species of birds endemic only to the Sky Islands, the imperial woodpecker (world’s largest woodpecker until extinction in 20th century) and the still-extant thick-billed parrot (famous for being the only parrot to live in the US, in Arizona/New Mexico, after the extinction of Carolina parakeet), which I like to call the “pine-cone parrot” because of its love for dismantling and eating pine cones.

(Fun aside: Imperial woodpecker, endemic to pine-oak of Sierra Madre Occidental, had its closest relative in the more-famous icon of extinction, the ivory-billed woodpecker of forested eastern US. And pine-cone parrot, endemic to pine-oak Sierra Madre Occidental, had its closest relative in the more-famous icon of extinction, the Carolina parakeet of forested eastern US.)

And the Sky Islands and Madrean Archipelago aren’t even “wet” environments (they’re surrounded and infiltrated by true deserts) and they aren’t even fully tropical. And so altitudinal zonation in tropical mountains is famous for its effects on biodiversity. (As in the Andes, where you have ice caps existing at the planet’s equator, glaciers, alpine meadows, and tropical rainforests sitting close together.) And apparently that same effect, altitudinal zonation, which gives the Sky Islands such biodiversity, might also be responsible for the high oak biodiversity in southern Mexico and tropical Mesoamerica, too? At least, according to this new stuff I read today.

This research published in the “August” 2020 (really, July 2020) edition of Scientific American is being celebrated as the “definitive” and “most comprehensive” genetic and biogeographic study of oak yet. Don’t know if that’s true because I’m horrible with technical stuff (chemistry; physics; physiology; microbiology). But as a biogegraphy fan, I liked that a lot of the article focused on the history of the distribution range of oak, and specifically addressed how Mexico/Mesoamerica came to have such biodiversity. (Reading this article today is what actually compelled me to think about oak and share the map today.)

Sorry in advance, these are all hazy screenshots from my older posts:

The Savanna Oak Foundation map of oak savanna:

Distribution of extant oak:

Altitudinal zonation of Sky Islands and Sierra Madre Occidental, which contributes to the biodiversity:

Biodiversity of Sky Islands:

Local distribution of jaguar:

Pine-cone parrot:

Imperial woodpecker:

Endemic and endangered bird species in the Sky Islands and northern Sierra Madre Occidental:

The distribution range of both the imperial woodpecker and the pine-cone parrot are pretty much confined to exactly this ecoregion depicted on the map, with a few transient outliers.

Anyway, here’s the excerpt from the 2020 “comprehensive” research on origin and geography of oak diversity:

As temperatures cooled worldwide, the North American climate also became more seasonal. [...] Oak pollen and leaf impressions became more common in the North American fossil record 35 million years ago, by which time decreased temperatures and increased seasonality had converted North America north of Mexico from a mostly tropical to a mostly temperate continental landscape. As climate change extirpated tropical forests from North America, ecological opportunity arose for the oaks. [...] From eastern North America, perhaps by way of Texas, the red and white oaks then moved into Mexico between 10 million and 20 million years ago. In all these areas, palms and broad-leaved evergreen trees had been pushed south [...]. The resulting abundance of open habitat enabled oaks to diversify. Increased ecological opportunity allowed oaks to undergo an adaptive radiation [...]. This adaptive radiation played out most dramatically in Mexico and Central America, where about 40 percent of all the world's oaks reside. Recall that oaks were a largely cold-adapted lineage that spread across the continent as temperatures dropped and seasonality increased. As they migrated south into Mexico, oaks climbed to higher elevations that more closely resembled the temperate biome in which they had evolved, and they encountered high topographic variation that readily separated them into reproductively isolated populations. Oaks also evolved more rapidly along the continuum from low water availability to high water availability as they moved into Mexico. [...] Thus, the reason for the high oak diversity in Mexico appears not to be warmer temperatures. And because Mexican oaks are relatively young, their high diversity has not accrued over comparatively long periods of evolutionary time. Rather adaptive radiation led to higher speciation rates in these evolutionarily young Mexican oaks as they moved into the mountains.

From: Andrew L. Hipp, Paul S. Manos, and Jeannine Cavender-Bares: “How Oak Trees Evolved to Rule the Forests of the Northern Hemisphere.” Scientific American. July/August 2020.

So oak in neotropical Mesoamerica: Altitudinal zonation is important?

Sad news:

[zaeedmassanis]

hello this is so cute!! sticking this over on the dragon age/mass effect blog from olllmaatta (and hoping i don’t clog up everyone else who’s been @’ed’s mentions - sorry in advance y’all :/) anyways. oop this is long putting it under a cut

1. tbh idk but like. i don’t think i’ve ever made a character in any setting or circumstance that wasn’t as close to a rogue as i could get so. rogue lmao

2. the power to stop time ngl lmao i just want to Sleep

3. uncharted the lost legacy is hands down The Favourite!! like i love uncharted games bc !! cover shooters!! stealth mechanic!! graphics!! good storylines!! but tll specifically bc girlfriends!! also sam drake is there!!

4. i’m rereading the percy jackson series if that counts lmao, other than that i just finished the devil in the white city for a class but it’s !! really good !! it’s about the 1893 chicago world’s fair and also hh holmes the serial killer

5. oh i’m ABSOLUTELY fire like it starts with being an aries but like,,,,,,,,,,,literally i’ve been associating with fire my entire life

6. i’ve got a BUNCH of ocs but these are my “canon” ones - everess cousland, isalin hawke, and wystra trevelyan!! i love them :] i have a Plethora of oc info pages on this blog - wardens, hawkes, inquisitors (and also my mass effect ones lol)

7. i write sometimes - not often recently bc i’ve been working on my senior thesis rip. my ao3 is zaeedmassanis and the last thing i wrote was a platonic exploration of everess + nathaniel howe’s relationship over the years - here’s an excerpt:

They fight their way through a few more groups of darkspawn, enough that Nathaniel almost stops sensing them around him. In one dungeon, the Commander sets a few prisoners free after checking that they’re not ghouls, and – if they’re alive, then Adria could be too. She has to be. She sent a note, they found it – it’s fate, it is.

Even though her back is turned when they come through the doorway, he recognises her immediately. She looks like home, like love–

But there’s something wrong. He can tell there’s something wrong, and then she turns around, and her face is streaked with something dark, and she lunges at them with mouth further open than should be possible, and–

And she falls, red blossoming on her tattered pink dress. Nathaniel rushes to her side, catching her just before she hits the ground. “What did you do?” he asks the Commander, voice breaking.

“She was too far gone,” the Commander says softly. “At that point – we couldn’t save her.”

And then Adria moves in Nathaniel’s arms, reaching for him (however weakly.) Her lips move, but he can’t hear her, and she smiles and then falls still.

Nathaniel wants to howl. He wants to sob so that the whole world can hear his grief. But twenty-nine years of habit is hard to shake, so he doesn’t allow himself more than just bowing his head, feeling the tears come.

No one speaks, and he’s unspeakably grateful for this one moment of tact from the apostate and the dwarf. He hears the faint rustling of armour as he weeps, but the Commander doesn’t say anything for a long moment, not even huffing in impatience.

Eventually, the sound of armoured footsteps winds its way into his senses, and he looks up to see a soldier come into the room. The Commander moves quickly to her, conferring with her in a quiet voice. Most of it is too faint for Nathaniel to hear, but at one point the Commander gestures at him and says, “Give her a proper burial, would you? It’s the least we can do.”

When they finally emerge into the warm summer day, Nathaniel doesn’t even bother shucking his darkspawn-innards-stained armour before beelining out of the keep and into the woods. He can’t think of much more than simply that he needs to be alone, needs to take some time to remember her, needs to think about all that she meant to him.

His feet take him back to the waterfall without his even thinking about it. In the eight years he’s been gone, the place hasn’t changed a bit, and he settles down on the springy grass and lets himself grieve, staring into the clear waters as his mind tears itself apart.

He doesn’t know how much time has passed before he’s roused from his reverie by some sound in the forest, but he automatically stands and reaches for a bow when a deer and her fawn bound into the glade. He sighs and sits back down, watching them drink. He’s far too high strung right now.

Then he realises that he hadn’t reached for the short bow he had brought from Ansburg, but instead the longbow the Commander had found for him. She gave it to you, his mind supplies as he examines it carefully. It’s the most well-crafted bow you’ve ever seen, and she could have kept it for herself. But she gave it to you.

He doesn’t know what to make of the gift. Four days ago, she was snarling at him, calling his family – his father – disgraced and tainted, seeing him as nothing more than the son of her family’s murderer. But there she was, thinking of him as soon as she found it and giving him the one thing he had wanted above all else, and–

“Thought I’d find you here.”

anyways this was fun!!! tysm :D

There have been some new people I've noticed around my blog over the past little while, and I'd like to get to know you all a bit better, so let's use this post as a way of sharing some things about yourself! Feel free to comment, or just reblog and put it in the tags. Here are some ideas, but you can go ahead and share whatever you feel like as well 😁

1. What DnD class would you be IRL?

2. If you could have any power, what would it be?

3. Favourite game(s) and why?

4. Reading any good books right now?

5. What natural element do you associate yourself with?

6. I know lots of you are in the DA fandom, so show me a pic of your OC! Other games are fine too!

7. Do you draw? Take screenshots? Write? Show me a sample!

If you see this, you're welcome to participate even if we don't know each other!

Gonna tag a few people to get the ball rolling

@olllmaatta @narya-welkin @varricmancer @thejeeperswife @ryanstormarts @bleden-mark @paisleybees @littleblue-eyedbirdchirps

@veari @pixelatedbread

[plug2game-blog]

Some Theories About The Diablo Immortal Backlash

Screenshot: Diablo Immortal cinematic trailer

Why was the Diablo Never-ceasing reaction so extreme? Why didn't Blizzard see it coming? Today on Get the MP3 right here, or check out an excerpt:

Jason: I can promise everyone that Diablo 4 is in development. I have spoken to many individuals who have actually dealt with it, or seen it, or played it. The game is being made right now. That's not to state the video game won't be canceled, because we have no concept what's going to take place in the coming years, however the game remains in development. To the individuals who freaked out, and numerous lots of people freaked out about Diablo Immortal, believing it was going to change Diablo 4, do not go nuts any longer.So yes, there was a great deal of fan reaction to Diablo Immortal, for many, lots of reasons. Everyone saw that person who got on line at the Diablo Q&A later and asked,'Is this an off-season April Fool's joke? 'Everyone saw latest thing, the YouTube downvotes, the Reddit comments. And so there are a great deal of questions about this rage. Here's a question I desire to ask you 2, and Maddy I'll toss it to you. Blizzard has actually created this atmosphere where they hold BlizzCons every year, and they say, 'Hey, Blizzard family, get together. 'And they constantly ask the same concerns at the beginning-- How numerous of you is it your very first BlizzCon? Your tenth BlizzCon?Maddy: And they began with that trailer showing everyone'ssmiling faces in the audience stating,'Welcome house!'Jason: So here's the concern. And I don't state this to justify any of the horribleresponses I've seen from some individuals online. However do you think Blizzard has facilitated this type of rage by producing this environment where the fans think they become part of the Blizzard household and they should be getting whatever they desire due to the fact that they belong to the Blizzard household and they're concerning BlizzCon every year? Do you think that becomes part of this conversation?Maddy: I believe so. I don't understand if I 'd say,'Well Blizzard deserves this since they have been facilitating these type of cons,'

since Blizzard is not the only organization that does things like this with video games and encourages this type of mindset. I think they're a great example, since it's a convention that's PAX-esque but it's run by Blizzard and it's only Blizzard games, and there's a sense that if you exist you are truly only a Blizzard gaming fan, and you can walk from the StarCraft bar to the Hearthstone- themed bar.'You're only playing these games' is sort of the ambiance of that convention, so it's special compared to PAX.But it does phone that sense of, well then just how much are the fans socially allowed to ask? And is it alright for them to voice those opinions directly at a Q&A where they can literally talk to the designers and insult them to their faces? Which is I guess socially stabilized enough now that people feel confident about doing it and they think it's funny and they can be on a Twitch clip and share it with their good friends, which's rewarded. That's a bit various however also kind of the same as tweeting at someone to drag them and getting upvotes and stuff like that, now it's in person at a Q&A so it's a little uncomfortable.Jason: I believe that because individuals feel like they belong to this extended Blizzard 'family,'due to the fact that of the method Blizzard has actually created this atmosphere, they seem like Blizzard should be making video games that's simply for them.

When Blizzard is like,'Hey we desire to make a video game that appeals to the mobile audience,' and it's clearly not for this crowd at BlizzCon, or for Diablo fans on the greater web at large, they feel personally assaulted. 'Hey, I took a day of rest work, flew throughout the nation to be at BlizzCon, and this is what you give me?'Which I believe is truly fascinating and worth a discussion-- Kirk what are your thoughts?Kirk: I have a lot of thoughts, due to the fact that this records so many parts of this conversation about video game culture that's been going on permanently. So there's a load to it. I think I'll try to perhaps no in on something. Something I have actually discovered over the years of covering video video games is that some of the most angry and intense reaction tends to be about things that are not out. It tends to be more like about marketing campaigns and announcements, and things people have actually found out about but have not yet played for themselves or seen. I believe in this case it's certainly a marketing failure for a lot of reasons, and the strength of the anger around it.Usually if individuals are mad about something that does not exist yet-- in this case it's a mobile game that's in advancement, and it's Diablo 4 that individuals don't truly know about. You have actually reported [Diablo 4] is taking place however individuals haven't found out about from Blizzard, so they don't understand what to believe. There's nowhere for that energy to go. It builds and lingers and gets worse. Thinking back to things like the Witcher 3 downgrade controversy, which comes to mind since I blogged about it. It was so similar since there was this sense of, 'OK this game now looks even worse,'and they're going through trailers ... Generally, everyone is discussing something that isn't [] real. And in this case it's real too. Of course there were genuine things

here-- there was a real statement, there was a genuine occasion, there were genuine people on stage. But I do get the feeling that a great deal of this is just a by-product of just how much of computer game culture is still built around marketing. It's a marketing event, so much of what people talk about are statements, which are essentially just marketing. And in this case, it was clearly a

marketing failure, just because, something as simple as putting [the Diablo Immortals announcement] at the end of a huge opening occasion ... Maddy: Treating this like the huge climax you're building to.Kirk: Precisely. And after that everybody's like, oh it's gon na be Diablo 4, undoubtedly it is ... and after that it super isn't. The entire thing relates back to how so much of video game culture has to do with marketing: what you're gon na buy, and what people are informing you to buy.Maddy: To your point about how individuals are mad about something that doesn't exist and likewise that they can't actually engage with yet,

then what they're mad about is the assumptions they're making about what it'sgoing to be. And maybe those assumptions are fair, possibly it is going to be exploitative or bad or whatever. However mostly what I have actually seen is individuals mad at the idea of Diablo being a mobile video game. And a few of it is more affordable criticisms-- this business is a known entity I do not like-- but a few of it is'How dare they put Diablo on a phone, that makes no sense, which's not for me, a core player.'So there's definitely that too, and even that is this concept of something that doesn't exist, therefore it's your own presumptions about what it should be. It 'd be cool if this was an amazing phone video game, however I do not think it's going to be, so possibly some of this anger will wind up sensation like it was' justified. 'And that's type of disturbing to me too, due to the fact that I seem like a few of it isn't established in affordable sentiments.Kirk: Particularly because we understand Diablo 4 is getting made. When you were describing their blog post, Jason, you utilized the word'essentially'-- essentially it stated Diablo 4 was going to exist. But that'basically 'is doing a great deal of work, because it didn't state that.Jason: That's the huge concern, right? It's not only about the truth that Diablo is on phones, it has to do with the reality that Diablo is on phones and they haven't stated anything about Diablo 4. All they've utilized is this unclear' We have numerous Diablo tasks in the works.'And if they would simply state, and it's confusing, it's inexplicable to me that

they wouldn't say that.'We are working on Diablo game for PC. 'You do not even need to state the name-- save the huge title for a cinematic or a teaser or whatever. Just state 'We are working on a new Diablo game for PC. 'That's all you need to say.Maddy: But isn't that setting a precedent that at the list below year's BlizzCon there will be a cinematic? Since as soon as you've announced that you have a game, and it's a Diablo game, even if you don't state it's Diablo 4, I feel like that then primes people to assume, OK so next year we're going to discover about it. I seem like that's the way expectations have been constructed, and part of that is the way that these events have been run for so long-- Kirk: I wonder, it'll be interesting to see how Bethesda announcing The Elder Scrolls VI 40 years ahead of time plays out. Because there could be a brand-new norm established there

, and it could be'Yeah, we'll simply inform people what we're working on,'and after that next year, it's 'Yeah we're still working on that, we do not have anything to reveal you, sorry, however we 're still making it.'Jason: That was brilliant, since the reason that is Fallout 76--'Here's this multiplayer survival thing, however do not fret, we're still making Bethesda-style video games. Here's Starfield, here's Elder Scrolls VI, you will not see them for a while, but this is what we're doing

, don't worry, we have not deserted our core fans.' And that's what Blizzard didn't do, which's why the core fans who seems like they're betrayed by Blizzard are going crazy. It's been trulyfascinating to see, and I seem like all of it could've been easily avoided. For a lot more, listen to the whole episode. As constantly, you can sign up for us on Apple Podcasts and to get every episode as it occurs. Leave us a review if you like what you hear, and reach us at splitscreen@kotaku.com!.?.! with any and all concerns, requests, and ideas.