#and very hyper-competent

[ofswordsandpens]

I'm sincerely very happy for anyone who is enjoying the show but every time I see takes that the show has improved the book characterizations or that the book characters are underdeveloped in comparison to the show...

[erodingsinner]

Can I be a hater for two minutes ? I know people love him and he kind of grew on me but I don't understand why Harry is part of the team. With Breanna it makes sense, she might not have her own specific skill set as people have pointed out but she does have skills! And she's there to replace Hardison anyway. But Harry... Why would the team need a lawyer? They clearly haven't had any use for one in all those years of sending people to jail. His official title is fixer but I cannot for the life of me remember any moment where he showed a particular skill set. ( Then again I can't remember much of Redemption anyway ) But like, he's just a random guy they picked off the street...

[horror-aesthete]

[deathandnonexistentialdread]

Psyco kid got shot in the head but he is still alive so you should run

The fact that Conan got shot (near) the head but still lived actually happened canonicaly

[briarpatch-kids]

One of my IRL friends is pregnant and dealing with clinical level fatigue for the first time and God, I forgot how frustrating it is. Poor woman is bored to tears.

[tanadrin]

@sadoeconomist

Something politically aware people on every part of the political spectrum from the left to the right think is true and leaders of the Russian, Chinese, Israeli, etc. governments believe in enough to talk about publicly and make major geopolitical decisions based on maybe is not just a crazy fringe conspiracy theory, could be that there's some truth to the CIA, NED, etc. having more involvement in these events than the video author thinks I watched all this stuff happen in real time, and I read your notes, which went over how Russian hybrid warfare succeeded in Crimea in 2014. Every major power takes hybrid warfare seriously, what's objectively stupid is your mischaracterization of how it works. Trying to astroturf a revolution out of nowhere simply by paying random citizens en masse to overthrow the government would indeed be stupid but that's not what it is. Your notes seem to suggest that the video says US was paying little attention to eastern Europe until 2013 but Russia was frequently reacting to imaginary US provocations because they are stupid. It's like there's a giant America-shaped hole in the video's narrative. Ukraine was understood to be a NATO-Russia geopolitical battleground long before Euromaidan, it wasn't just Putin shadowboxing imaginary opponents out of pure stupidity that led to this.

You seem to be operating on the basic assumption that governments don't do stupid things for no reason, or fall prey to obviously inane conspiracy theories. That's simply not true; governments are led by human beings, human beings are subject to a common set of cognitive biases, and when you're an authoritarian right-winger (as the leaders of Russia, China, and Israel all are right now), an explanation for your apparent unpopularity that pins all the blame on the CIA instead of your shitty policies and your attempts to cling to power flatters those biases.

But we don't need to speculate about the propensity of governments to do stupid shit, because we have plenty of historical and contemporary examples of governments believing in nonsense: Havana Syndrome in the US, AIDS denialism in South Africa, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in Nazi Germany and Imperial Russia, etc., etc. And often these false beliefs lead to real strategic blunders: the Bay of Pigs, the Iraq War, World War II, etc. Sometimes world leaders are stupid! Like, leadership probably tends to select for some kinds of intelligence and ability--charisma, social intelligence, and so forth--but it doesn't automatically make you a geopolitical genius, or make you immune to believing false things about the world.

And the biggest problem with the conspiracy theory outlined here isn't just that we can trace its origin to a fringe American political cult, it's that it's not necessary to explain any development in politics since 1989. There is no problem in understanding the revolutions of '89 or 2000-2014 that CIA involvement is necessary to solve. Indeed, as the videos point out (if you would actually watch them), trying to use "the CIA did it" as an explanation adds considerable problems, bc color revolution theory doesn't work. It's based on misconceptions, misunderstanding of data, and a healthy dose of paranoia.

The only real problem is trying to explain Putin's behavior--and that doesn't require color revolution theory to be true, only that Putin believes it is true. And why he would believe something is true, when he has the supposedly vast power of the Russian state at his beck and call, is easy to explain: authoritarian dictators surrounded by yes men do not have accurate pictures of the world! From Idi Amin to Saddam Hussein to Vladimir Putin, there is a common pattern of authoritarian dictators losing touch with reality, getting really weird, and coming to believe all kinds of counterproductive stuff that flatters their egos. It would be an even bigger problem to try to explain why Putin was immune to that dynamic after 24 years in power.

"World leaders don't shadowbox opponents out of pure stupidity" is an assumption that seems wholly ungrounded to me. Why not? World leaders do foolish things all the time on large and small scales. World leaders make mistakes. World leaders can become paranoid and out of touch--and if they lead countries without functioning electoral democracies, they can stay in power regardless. World leaders are not a magic special class of human being. They're just people. And whether it's because they're your uncle who watches nothing but OANN and Fox, or they're the President of Russia and they have yes-men and the Global Research guys telling them only what they want to hear, they can end up making absolute nonsense a load-bearing part of their worldview.

[divvy-div-art]

I still fw Star Trek Online 🙏

textless version ⬇️

[ibijau]

writing is genuinely fun sometimes because like. You'll have one guy whose personality you haven't really figured out yet. And you get to discover it as you go. And sometimes, the personality is nothing like what you expected when you started out.

[sigwa]

they're flirting

[wibble-wobbegong]

miwi but they’re enemies to lovers

[thoughtsformtheuniverse]

I’m having a lot of emotions about Pickler from A Practical Guide to Evil, and there is a tragic dearth of content about this minor grumpy goblin. so. quotes that make me feel emotions, under a readmore

“We can’t win this. We can’t beat them,” Pickler hissed angrily, but her voice broke after. “I will not let us die doing the right thing. We are going to grow old, all of us. I will not – I don’t-“

“We can,” I said softly. “You know that already. It’s what scares you. No shame in that. I know what’s ahead better than any of you, and I’m terrified. It’ll be blood and mud and grief, but don’t think for a moment we can’t do it.”

The Senior Sapper took her hands of the table brusquely, to hide their shaking.

“It’ll be to the death, Foundling,” she said, amber eyes flicking away. “To the death. Do not start this lightly.”

-Book 3, Chapter 17: Allegiance help me they’re all so young and so scared and they were going to grow old, all of them

— “I work with imperfect tools, the way all my predecessors have,” Pickler said, “but it… irks, that I know we could be better. That we could match Keter blow for blow, if we had the time and the coin.”

I hid a fond smile. Leave it to my Sapper-General to be irked by being on the lesser side in an arms race with the Hidden Horror. Even most heroes, those chosen few blessed with the belief of promised victory, usually limited their ambition to survival and eking out a win when it came to the Original Abomination. Yet Pickler of the High Ridge tribe had been forged of goblin steel tempered in Wasteland fire, kept sharp by the whetstone of the Uncivil Wars. When faced with dreadful might, the Sapper-General of Callow’s nature was not to cower but to crave to surpass it.

“War’s not over,” I said. “One day it will take us to the gates of the Crown of the Dead itself, Pickler.”

I offered her a smile.

“On that day, I expect you will find your coffers filled to burst and few requests beyond acquiescence,” I said.

“Gobbler grant me breath until then,” Pickler of the High Ridge tribe grinned, all teeth and malice, and offered a quick bow. “I’ll get started on the work, Your Majesty.” Book 6, Chapter 65: Cross-Check

and

— The dead were scattered and burning, the miraculous engines known as Pickler’s Nails – picklernagel – pounding away at their retreating mass.

Balls of pitch hit the ground, tossed by spindly catapults, spilling blackness where they landed and spreading the flames everywhere. The changes goblin engineering had made here… The Dead King’s commanders had grown wary of committing beorns to the first wave of the assault, after the fourth time they died without even touching a wall. Wary! The absurdity of that old monster’s generals being wary of anything at all had been as fine wine. -Book 7, Interlude: West I Pickler looked at the Dead King himself and said up your fucking game. And she was right. I love her

— “Don’t,” Pickler fervently said. “Don’t let us forge another closed kingdom within the kingdom. Let us into your cities, your countryside, your wilderness. Let us be part of something that does not want to eat us.”

I flinched away from the intensity of her gaze.

“They’ll hate you for it, the Matrons,” she said. “For showing them they don’t own what it means to be a goblin, that they just buried every other way and called it guidance. And I know it’s not what you want, not what Vivienne wants, that you have to think in kingdoms and favours and hard coin.”

She finished her drink, set it down.

“But we’ve stood behind you, Catherine,” Pickler said. “Not them, us. From the start, we’ve been with you. Sappers and soldiers and scouts, we’ve bled for you. And I won’t say it’s owed, because my people don’t believe in debt, but I need you to understand that I loved Robber – more than I thought, more than I knew – but there are fifty thousand like him the Eyries that never managed to flee. That are stuck and lost and will never see the light of day, know what the sun and the stars look like or even feel the wind on their face. Not unless you offer your hand to them.”

She left her chair, stood before me.

“I don’t have anything to offer you,” she said. “Nothing to bargain with. All I can say is please-”

I pushed back my chair, half-risen even as my leg ached, but I was not quick enough to stop her getting on her knees.

“- help us,” Pickler said. “Save us from ourselves, from each other.”

“I-” I choked out, at a loss for words.

“I think you might just be the only powerful person in the world who cares, Catherine,” she quietly said. “And I know you’re a queen, that you can’t afford to bend, but still I ask.”

She smiled, heartbreakingly.

“Please,” Pickler asked. “If not you, then who?” Book 7, Chapter 24: Bequeathal

— “I cannot repay you for this,” she finally said. “I do not have the years. But anything-”

“You told me,” I said, “that your people don’t believe in debt.”

She smiled, baring teeth like needles.

“For this, Catherine,” Pickler replied, “I would learn.”

“There’s nothing to pay back,” I gently said. “Even if it weren’t the right thing to do, even if there was nothing to gain, I would still have done it.”

I met her eyes.

“Because I do believe in debts,” I said. “Because you’re one of mine, Pickler, and you asked.” Book 7, Chapter 52: Mass

my heart, my fucking heart. because she asked

[sparky-is-spiders]

I want Jon and Sasha to both be the archivist and to drag each other down through a corruption arc.

[saesyndrome]

i love how peeta is like. a woman. like okay... peeta has every single stereotypical "feminine" trait. he bakes. he paints. he's good at makeup. he isn't outwardly aggressive. a lot of times he's much more passive-aggressive in his words and actions. he's very in touch with his feelings. he's very sensitive. he's kind and compassionate to a fault. he's CONSTANTLY the damsel in distress. he's borderline useless in the games and katniss is trying to protect him 24/7. he's clumsy and has no survival skills. he's the love interest in a shounen manga....

[bigskydreaming]

I’m ngl, I’m mildly interested in the Lazarus Planet stuff coming up, mostly because I miss being invested in DC comics and also I’ve been very invested in Marvel comics for awhile, and when nature is out of balance to that degree, bad things happen.

Like, I’m not expecting it to be GOOD, per se, but it does look like radical changes across the board (even if temporary), and that’s the kind of shake-up that can rattle loose various ideas or set-ups that intrigue me and get the inspiration engines up and running.

Course, first there’s this whole Batman vs Robin set-up to put everything in place, and I’m aggressively trying to ignore all of that and just wade into the eventual Lazarus Planet stuff armed with wiki summaries, because oh look, all the former Robins have been brainwashed into being evil and trying to kill Bruce because brainwashed Batkids is something new and different and oh well, at least they’re just making this about former Robins and not Bruce’s kids so its not ACTUALLY like Cass and Duke have just been left on the sidelines again right?

Hey, completely unrelated, but who wants to join in on a “Its Been This Many Days Since We Last Fucked With Dick Grayson’s Brain” scoreboard as like a Christmas gift for the DC offices?

Anyway, my only real takeaway on this is not only are Dick, Jason, Tim, Steph and Damian all united in being evil and targeting Bruce, they’ve also all been armed with heavy-duty mystical weapons like the Sword of Sin and Cloak of Cagliostro and lol its like wait at what point do you have to take a look at how you hype up the Batkids’ own skills and danger-levels and be like, umm, Bruce really should NOT be coming out of this event alive but okay.

[katierosefun]

realizing that gracie abrams is jj abrams’ daughter is sure hell of a realization to make when you’re naming a mckirk fic after a gracie abrams lyric, huh

[13eyond13]

.