#and I'm sure we'll get back to that

[mossmx]

me pumped and READY to explain what fandom is, just to get SLAMMED by the reality that they don't know wtf digital art is or how it works:

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I know those eyes.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[mattodore]

date night fits 👯‍♂️

[myreia]

✦ F F X I V L E V E L 9 0

—compendium

[bumblingbabooshka]

I think Tom would have a major preoccupation with the fact that Tuvok has only had sex with his wife. Like, Tuvok lets this fact slip and Tom can't let it go for some reason. Even though everyone he brings it up to is like "?? And? What do you want me to say about that? Who cares?" Tom for some reason is still like:

He can't even verbalize why

[r0semultiverse]

Digital Circus AMA Notes

Digital Circus is getting a season 1 at some point!!!!

#webcore aesthetic board for the series design

Pomni was going to be a frog originally. 🐸

90s toys Zooble inspo

Caine is an antagonist, but not by active choice, he doesn't know he's not helping. He doesn't feel a whole spectrum of human emotions (he's an AI).

"Caine canonically just lets things happen if he thinks it's funny."

Characters eat like Chao in Chao garden in Sonic. The characters can eat the food, but they can't digest it.

Jax's favorite food is spaghetti.

Pomni likes salmon.

Q "Was the ending a 'Last Supper' reference?" A "in a very superficial kinda way yeah." Religious stuff is sometimes just used for the funny.

Gooseworx tumblr sketches MAY or MAY NOT be canon to the series, so it's up in the air for every single one.

People can abstract from feeling too much pain if it breaks their mind from it being too much. Characters feel pain from things, but not as intensely as they would in real life.

Zooble is gonna swap parts every episode (implying they have spare parts) except their body & head.

Jax chose his own name & gooseworx likes to think he chose Gangle's name.

Ragatha was named "Emmy" originally.

They (the cast of characters trapped in the circus) can't change their clothes but Caine can. It's part of their skin sorta kinda.

There's empty space under Pomni's hat because video game model physics.

Spamton was partially inspo for Caine, Caine's VA did Spamton dubs.

Gangle only has 2 masks. Why's it (her hapiness mask) break all the time? Mental state, but the "real her" is "harder to break."

Kaumfo was gonna be part of the main cast originally before Jax.

Kaufmo's model has nothing below the waist at this time, but was made for that promotional image on twitter.

Q "What kinda person was Kaufmo?" A "He was the same as Ragatha in a sense, goofy & cheery, sometimes toxic levels of positivity."

I'm paraphrasing for the sake of note taking in real time, go watch the stream playback for more context & details if you want.

[kitkatsgalore]

you have my soul, you have my heart ♡

[arodeku]

In light of recent events (everyone collectively losing all hope of dapg is coming back in 2024) I went back and checked when the first videos of each year were posted in the past and I'm glad to inform you all that every single time a video was uploaded no sooner than the 17th and no later than the 20th. Please chill.

[jtl-fics]

I just saw the “Farmer Pain Scale” video again and have now imagined a sign that sits in Abby’s office.

I think Andrew asks for a copy of it for their professional team’s medical staff.

[legobiwan]

TotJ Rewatch: Ramblings (1 of 3)

After a long abstention from consuming anything Star Wars-related, I plopped down on my couch yesterday and decided it was time to dip my toes back into this arena, mostly for the purposes of writing.

And what better way to delve back into this universe than by starting with the Dooku episodes of Tales of the Jedi?

Boi, oh boi, had I forgotten how much I love this character.

And so without a thesis or much a point whatsoever, I'd like to ramble about a few dozen thoughts I had while yelling incoherently through this rewatch.

Episode 2, "Justice"

One of the overarching themes of Dooku's episodes is this unsettling notion of darkness. Even at the start of this episode, gone are the usual triumphant Star Wars themes are so familiar with - the militant and boisterous brass, the rising strings and woodwinds. Instead, this episode opens with somewhat dissonant string passages interspersed with with a subtle, almost glistening electronic tones that meld in and out of the sustained string notes.

There is no optimism whatsoever as Dooku and Qui-gon set down on what looks to be the charred husk of village.

The remainder of these episodes rarely lighten in tone. And I don't think the thrust here is that Dooku is the only Jedi to have encountered these unfortunate situations - suffering and devastation due to corrupt politicians in a Republic the Jedi is supposedly tasked with protecting. What I do think is that this is all meant to be seen through the lens of Dooku's increasing disillusion. That these scenes are bleak because that's what Dooku is focusing on, more and more, to the point where...well, we know what happens.

But anyway, to get back to the episode.

You have give props to the animation team here. The continuity with Qui-gon's older self having a tendency to show cleavage apparently stems from his youth, where it was even more exacerbated. (Aren't you cold, Qui-gon?) The best part of this is the contrast with Dooku and he (of course) very well put-together outfit.

Maybe teen!Qui-gon just went through too many growth spurts and the Jedi tailor threw up their hands in frustration. I do find it infinitely amusing that Dooku - Mr. Propriety himself - had two students (Rael and Qui-gon) who might as well have been wearing burlap sacks half the time. Never let it be said that Dooku didn't allow his charges to express themselves, even though I'm certain it vexed the hell out him.

What's fascinating about this episode is the absolute economy of dialogue. There's not much of it, letting the visuals of the ravaged village and Dooku's own tight-lipped anger carry much of the weight of the narrative. It's almost as if we're at a point with Dooku where he knows he's angry, he knows his base instincts are trending in a bad direction, but he's still trying so, so hard to be a Jedi and toe the line, to believe in the Order he brought up in, which I think is partially why Dooku is so reserved in this particular episode, minus the part where he tries to Force-choke a guy.

I love that Qui-gon is doing the majority of the talking here. There's no disapproval written on Dooku's face, no motion made for him to hold his tongue or know his place. It truly shows the level of trust Dooku has in his student (and the level of trust in himself as a teacher) and also the level of respect he has for Qui-gon (despite his sartorial missteps). I've said it before and I'll say it again. Dooku is a teacher, through and through. He trains Qui-gon and is devastated at his death. He trains Ventress and is unwillingly forced to abandon her. He trains Savage as if he were a dark Padawan. He's constantly making remarks to Obi-wan as to how he could improve. The man can't help himself. But Qui-gon was special to him, as we'll see in another few episodes.

One of the most fascinating layers of Dooku's character is his political idealism. I'll point it out in more detailed fashion when I recap the next episode, but young Dooku and Padmé Amidala have so much in common. And it's wild for Dooku, as someone who (both canonically and in the EU) was born into a noble family, was aware of his heritage, and by all accounts, maintained a level of haughty distance from most people exacerbated by a taste for the finer things in life.

And yet...and yet. This is a man who is unbelievably angry at the actions of a corrupt Senate. That a village could be treated and forgotten this way. Padmé is little different, as we see in TPM and throughout TCW. (You have to wonder what a political powerhouse those could have been if they had stood on the same side of the aisle at the same time).

When we think of Dooku, we think of a relentless man who would go to any length to see the Jedi destroyed. And later, he goes on to commit some true atrocities. But like many roads paved to hell, it begins with good intentions, even if they may be self-serving.

Is it noblesse oblige? Maybe there's a hint of that. Does Dooku really care about the little person? In a way, but I don't think that's his major motivating factor.

Dooku grew up with the Jedi. He loves the Jedi, or at least loved the Jedi. He was talented and became one of their best. And then he started to see the cracks in the foundation and began to question everything about the Jedi, everything about himself. So much of this, in my mind, stems from a sense of betrayal by an organization and ideal which he held so dear to his heart (not to mention his main teacher was the head of the whole shebang).

What do you do when the thing you identify with the most - the thing that is you identity - your passion, in a way, your first love - curdles into something unrecognizable? If Dooku loved the Jedi any less, he would have left. (And that touches on a whole other cultural aspect of the Jedi Order and a type of institutional pressure that I won't get into here). Well, in Dooku's case, you start by trying to reform it from the inside. By bucking authority and replacing cracked edifice with your own hewn stone. Until you can't anymore, until the weight is too much to bear and your grievances begin to spill and metastasize into something else altogether.

The funny thing is, I feel like the start of this confrontation would have gone the same with almost any other Jedi. I can't see, say, Mace Windu (and I choose him as he gets underserved flak for being rule-abiding to the point of inhumanity) just up and saying, "Oh yeah, dude, you're totally right. Let's fuck over these peasants."

But where it gets interesting is when Dooku allows it to become a firefight. There's a long series of shots showing the fear of the villagers, the way Qui-gon looks around and is uncertain as to whether or not this is the right path.

Yes, Dooku, you do.

But. You're also willing (if not thrilled) for these people to become momentary collateral damage in an idealogical battle, as we see during the firefight exchange.

And the thing is...there's no easy answer here. It's not Republic vs. the Confederacy. It's not good versus evil. It's a lot more complicated than that, and Dooku isn't wrong in allowing the confrontation to happen. The Senator is corrupt. The Senator is willing to burn the village to the ground. The Jedi do (or should) serve the people of the Republic, first and foremost.

You can see why Dooku Force-choked the guy, in a way. He's still at a point where this collateral damage goes against everything he believes in, where he sees that the only option of restoring justice is through darkness, and he's willing to go there. For justice. For peace. (For himself).

The real hero here is Qui-gon, who is quick enough to realize number one, that his Master is going over the edge again (and given Qui-gon's response, I have zero reason to believe this was the first incident), and number two, that the Senator's son would be far more effective in persuading his father to abandon his terrible, awful plan of obliteration (although would his father have listened had Dooku not choked out of him first?)

As we know, Dooku is an aloof man. Touch is probably not one of his most-used emotional languages. I realize that in raising a child, even if they are ten to twelve years old when they come into your care, you probably have to have some comfort or at least tolerance of physical touch. But the fact that Qui-gon has no fear of Dooku and his possible reaction, that he instinctually takes him by the shoulder. I feel that with Dooku, so little can say so much, and to me, this is obvious proof of the solidity and trust in that relationship.

Part of the issue here is - Dooku's gambit works. Now, yes, he is absolutely correct in the exchange below that Qui-gon truly saved the day, but as I noted, it's not guaranteed the Senator would have listened to his son prior to having the life choked out of him. And what does Dooku received in response? Positive reinforcement. The village is being rebuilt. The Senator (for now) is reconsidering his actions. Brute force, in a way, worked, even if Dooku at the time was not fully in control of his own actions. And there's this weird negative/positive feedback loop where Dooku is rewarded for his actions, even if he knows his methods were less than savory, even his guilt eats at him, leading to the discussion below.

It's so interesting that Dooku is teetering on the edge during these years, but is always somehow brought back. It's really when he stops having a Padawan - that's one of the tipping points, where he has no counter-balance, has no one else to invest himself in, to learn from and, in some ways, live for. You almost have to wonder if some of Dooku's issues could have been solved by forcing another student on him after Qui-gon was knighted.

Next post on the docket: "Choices"

[shima-draws]

My doctor: Hey yeah that's not normal I don't think it's an issue with your hip

Me: Oh?

My doctor: It's an issue with your spine

Me: OH

[guinevereslancelot]

starting to kind of date someone right before christmas is so stressful fr. do i get him a gift or what we've been on two dates but i'm seeing him tonight n it's christmas eve.....but what if he didn't get me anything then it will be weird.....

[anghraine]

I'm suffering technological oppression

(do not take this at all seriously, this is absolutely a minor problem)

Okay, so in my earlier time in my PhD program, I saved up and replaced my shitty old HP laptop with a Dell G3 3590. The relevant information about it for this whining session is that it has two main drives: the OS (C:) drive, an SSD with 220 GB, and then an HDD with 930 GB.

This was a pretty good gaming/academia laptop for a couple of years, but at that point, developed some wonky problems including erratic communication with my mouse, very slow processing times, and emitting a terrifying scream from the depths of hell whenever it started up (an alarm to tell me that a fan wasn't working, it turned out). This all developed post-warranty and for various reasons I ended up deciding on replacing it rather than having it fixed, so I saved up again and got an MSI laptop I refer to as "Pherenike" or "the Beast" for reasons I won't get into.

Pherenike only has one (SSD) drive with 800 GB or whatever and is incredibly fast and powerful for everything I've wanted to do, awesome. I wrote basically my entire dissertation on Pherenike, saved every file even remotely related to my research on it, and it was absolutely fantastic for a year. But riiiight after the warranty expired, the laptop's monitor started coming off and it could no longer close, which made it useless as a laptop. Worse still, the hinge situation got progressively worse until the screen was just sort of flopping around unless I set it up in exactly the right position and nobody moved it. It's gotten bad enough that I sent my dad a video about this known MSI issue and sadly left Pherenike with him after backing up its data.

Meanwhile, my university job really needs me to have a working computer of some kind. So I resuscitated the Dell, updated everything, and tried to figure out the old problems. The mouse has been fine thus far (/fingers crossed), the single dysfunctional fan is still causing the alarm but I can get past it with ESC for now, and I realized that part of the reason it had slowed down so badly was that the OS/C: drive, the SSD, was holding basically everything that mattered and was way too full. So I moved documents, pictures, and low-requirement programs over to the HDD/D: drive, and several updates later it's more or less functioning, even if it couldn't keep up with Pherenike (...if Pherenike could stay upright, anyway).

ANYWAY I saw that the cool new BG3 patch had released, but... even after moving every possible non-essential file over to the HDD/D: drive, the Dell's OS/C: SSD only has 53 GB (out of 220) free and I can't download BG3 onto my main drive (the SSD is a basic requirement for it to run properly). Everything else still on my SSD is either trivially tiny or something that came with the system and seems rather important to keeping it running. It seems absurd that this would amount to over 150 GB of the most valuable real estate on the machine (a lot of this seems to be "Alienware Command Center" or something like that, which is spread across a zillion different folders in different parts of C:) but so it is.

So I own the game and I have two computers that meet the specifications and one is the computer I am writing this post on, but I can't actually play it on either of them :(

[dungeons-and-dragon-age]

OKAY. MAN.

[sheyshen]

i think the main issue i'm having with veilguard atm is that they're sharing too much. there's too many things too many spoilers (no matter how minor) too many reveals and peaks that it's kinda dampening the hype so close to release. before the peak at the CC keep people were theorizing what might be important what might come up. there was talk and people looking forward to getting their hands on the game and CC and now there's just disappointment especially from people who don't really like solas all that much. we knew he'd be a focus in the story (since it was called dreadwolf originally after all) but with the preview having such small things and the focus just being "did your inquisitor kiss him? did they want to save him?" for sure feels like a reduction of what the inquisitor was in the previous game and how they could impact veilguard's story to "does solas like like you y/n." (which feels ironic honestly)

idk. i'm still looking forward to playing but seeing the 180 from so many fans after the latest reveal is quite something. I'm not saying BW should be secretive about the details, especially after a decade of development, but yea i get how so many people have kinda started losing that excitement for the next iteration of the series after having the previous 3 be so interconnected in little personal ways and now knowing this one won't be. while i get there's a lot of choices that have been made across the games that wouldn't make sense to import, what was the point of including the inquisition portion of the keep? just to have a little sheet of what options you made? that's it?

i'm sure this has been said a million times but just kinda getting my thoughts on it out. the game will probably still be good, the story fun, the gameplay engaging, but it does feel like they're going for a sort of reset of the series with this one and i can understand the mixed feelings about it.