#but this specific version was so good it’s the one I make

[subjectsix]

KIP'S BIG POST OF THINGS TO MAKE THE INTERNET & TECHNOLOGY SUCK A LITTLE LESS

Post last updated November 23, 2024. Will continue to update!

Here are my favorite things to use to navigate technology my own way:

A refurbished iPod loaded with Rockbox OS (Rockbox is free, iPods range in price. I linked the site I got mine from. Note that iPods get finicky about syncing and the kind of cord it has— it may still charge but might not recognize the device to sync. Getting an original Apple cord sometimes helps). Rockbox has ports for other MP3 players as well.

This Windows debloater program (there are viable alternatives out there, this one works for me). It has a powershell script that give you a little UI and buttons to press, which I appreciate, as I'm still a bit shy with tech.

Firefox with the following extensions: - Consent-O-Matic (set your responses to ALL privacy/cookie pop-ups in the extension, and it will answer all pop-ups for you. I can see reasons to not use it, but I appreciate it) - Facebook Container ("contains" Meta on Facebook and Instagram pages to keep it from tracking you or getting third party cookies, since Meta is fairly egregious about it) - Redirect Amp to HTML (AMP is designed for mobile phones, this forces pages to go to their HTML version) - A WebP/AVIF image converter - uBlock Origin and uBlacklist, with the AI blacklist loaded in to kill any generative AI results from appearing in search engines or anywhere.

Handbrake for ripping DVDs— I haven’t used this in awhile as I haven’t been making video edits. I used this back when I had a Mac OS

VLC Media Player (ol’ reliable)

Unsplash & Pexels for free-to-use images

A password manager (these often are paid. I use Dashlane. There are many options, feel free to search around and ask for recs!). There is a lot that goes into cybersecurity— find the option you feel is best for you.

Things I suggest:

Understanding Royalty Free and the Creative Commons licenses

Familiarity with boolean operators for searching

Investing in a backup drive and external drive

A few good USBs, including one that has a backup of your OS on it

Adapter cables

Avoiding Fandom “wikias” (as in the brand “Fandom”) and supporting other, fan-run or supported wikis. Consider contributing if its something you find yourself passionate or joyful about.

Finding Forums for the things you like, or creating your own*

Create an email specifically for ads/shopping— use it to receive all promotional emails to keep your inbox clean. Upkeep it.

Stop putting so much of your personal information online— be willing to separate your personal online identity from your “online identity”. You don’t owe people your name, location, pronouns, diagnoses, or any of that. It’s your choice, but be discerning in what you give and why. I recommend avoiding providing your phone number to sites as much as possible.

Be intentional

Ask questions

Talk to people

Remember that you can lurk all you want

Things that are fun to check out:

BBSes-- here's a portal to access them.

Neocities

*Forums-- find some to join, or maybe host your own? The system I was most familiar with was vbulletin.

MMM.page

Things that have worked well for me but might work for you, YMMV:

Limit your app usage time on your smartphone if you’re prone to going back to them— this is a tangible way to “practice mindfulness”, a term I find frustratingly vague ansjdbdj

Things I’m looking into:

The “Pi Hole”— a raspberry pi set up to block all ads on a specific internet connection

VPNs-- this is one that was recommended to me.

How to use computers (I mean it): Resources on how to understand your machine and what you’re doing, even if your skill and knowledge level is currently 0:

This section I'll come back an add to. I know that messing with computers can be intimidating, especially if you feel out of your depth. HTML and regedits and especially things like dualbooting or linux feel impossible. So I want to put things here that explain exactly how the internet and your computer functions, and how you can learn and work with that. Yippee!

[greatwyrmgold]

Obviously, the power (and even whether this gets bad enough to cause a trigger event) depends on a lot of details that your friend didn't tell us. But that just means we can fill in the blanks in a way that makes the story/powers work better.

My versions are below the cut.

Alex is the stubborn guy, Bob is the rich guy.

Version 1: The Involuntary Hermit

This version paints Bob as a bit of a capitalist supervillain...I mean, more than "deliberately depriving Alex of sunlight to drive him insane" implies.

Construction has already started, and they're laying foundations for a building that will obviously intersect with Alex's property. Every afternoon, when Alex is driving home from work, Bob's construction vehicles and supplies are in the road—not enough to actually block the road, just enough to make it inconvenient to return. There's a crane with a wrecking ball attached, parked in the lot next to Alex's, waiting.

Alex has complained to the police and City Hall and every other authority he can think about, but they say nothing Bob did is technically illegal. He considered suing Bob, but he can't afford the lawyer. He even contacted the news media, but no one with a significant audience wanted to run the story, not with how much hype there was around his new development.

Obviously, there's a Shaker element to this power, but the long-term and institutional aspects make me think Architect Tinker, specifically the terraform subtype. Alex can build megaprojects which reshape the landscape, both as an intentional design decision and an unavoidable side effect.

I've tried to narrow it down from there, but that's already got the Parahuman Knife-Twist. Alex got powers because he wanted to keep his home, but using those powers would destroy his home. (It's not like he has access to an off-site laboratory.)

I guess it needs to be something that Alex could build in his basement, but which can still have that kind of earthshaking effect. Maybe something seismic, Tecton on a larger scale? He can disrupt Bob's construction, wreck his scaffolding, topple his vehicles, but in the process he also damages his own house. And if he wants to use his powers to their fullest extent, he needs to go farther, destroying the entire neighborhood, replacing the house he knows and loves with a bunch of caves and maybe an earthy keep.

Version 2: Bound by Duty

In this version, Alex would have left long before the darkness-wall if it was just him. But it's not Alex's house, it's the house of Alex's aging relative(s); maybe grandparents, maybe parents, depends on how old Alex is. This Alex has to take care of his relatives, because no one else will. And they don't want to leave this house, come hell or high water.

Alex feels trapped, partly by his sense of filial duty, partly by the literal wall being built around the house said duty traps him in. So this feels like a Mover trigger.

Looking at the MOVERS document, I see elements of Takeoff (close relationship to the source of tension), maybe Hurdle (harassment), and Gate (long-term, but not long-term enough for a tinker power, because I don't want to write up a bunch of tinker powers). In reverse order, that's creating something that grants movement (like a launchpad or gate); a power that lets Alex "run, leap, climb and/or bound"; and an effect produced on departure.

There are a lot of ways to mix those ideas; imagine a power that could make boost pads like in racing games, or bounce pads like in platforming games, or...something not from video games. So let's look for the Parahuman Knife-Twist and build a power around that.

Alex is torn between his desire to help his family and the desire to leave. In theory there's a way to compromise those desires; living in a house surrounded by walls and whatever else Bob is building can't be good for them, right? So selling the house and moving somewhere else would be good for them, right? That's just not what they want. So a power that lets Alex move others (whether they want to be moved or not) seems like a good first step.

This Alex also doesn't have any goal more specific than "get away from Bob". He has a place he wants to escape, but not a specific destination. So maybe the movement should be unpredictable; he can decide on a general direction that someone bounces, but it's not precise or consistent.

So I was hanging out with a friend from the west coast today, and he mentioned an anecdote about some rich guy who was trying to buy up all the homes in a neighborhood, but there was this one guy who wouldn't sell no matter what, so the rich guy built giant walls on the edges of all the surrounding properties to try and drive the holdout insane from sunlight deprivation. I told my friend that this sounded like the kind of thing that would make for a fantastic trigger event. I told him I was going to turn this over to the wormblr brain trust to see what all of you would come up with

[theresattrpgforthat]

So, I went to a game store, and I asked if there were any good beginner games for someone who tried the DnD Essentials Kit and found it too complicated, and you'll never guess what one singular game they suggested!

THEME: Simpler Games than DND.

My friend, I’m not a very good guesser, but I hope that I am able to present you with some games that will give you what you’re looking for.

24XX: Chaos Unit, by polyhedralmice

Deep under the busy streets of Sapien City is the headquarters of the Vermin Squad, the espionage wing of a secret organization of urban animals known as the CHAOS Unit. They capitalize on the fact that vermin are virtually invisible human inhabitants of the city and use they use their street smarts to run vital missions for the unit. Raccoons, opossums, pigeons and squirrels each play specific roles and together form teams that take on the most vital of missions. From intercepting life-saving pizza orders to rescuing their colleagues from the dastardly Animal Control, there is no task too daunting for the brave animals of the Vermin Squad. Every night teams are sent out on their missions, and this is the story of one of those teams. Nothing will stop these brave agents from successfully completing their tasks (except maybe a humane trap baited with peanut butter). 

CHAOS Unit is a spy themed hack based on Jason Tocci’s 24XX.

24XX games are great for groups that love different-sided dice. In general, you only have a few skills for your character that are outside the normal parameters (upgraded to d8 - d12), and the success threshold is the same for pretty much every roll. The challenges and situations of any given scenario are typically presented as roll tables, allowing the GM to come up with an adventure just by rolling a few dice.

CHAOS Unit has just a few character options, some simple gear options, and a comparatively light-hearted premise. It’s a great introduction to the system, and learning how to play one 24XX game makes every other 24XX game a piece of cake to learn, even if they include new rules.

Loot, by Gila RPGs.

LOOT is a fantasy TTRPG by Gila RPGs that combines looter shooter mechanics with west marches vibes. When a rebellion toppled a lich overlord and torn down his city, the people were left with a lot of loot, and a lot of problems. That's where you come in.

Get some friends together, fight some monsters, deck your characters out in cool loot. Do it all over again.

Even though LUMEN uses grid-based combat, your character’s stats are simplified, reduced to a few things: health, armour, and three action types: force, flow & focus. Your stats themselves come from the items that your carry - your loot.

Your loot is organized through slots on your character sheet: you can only carry so much, so you’ll have to think carefully about what kind of stat bonuses and abilities you want. I find that a visual inventory can make it easier to keep track of everything you have, and can help some players learn how to think strategically. If you like the fantasy and strategy that exists in D&D but don’t want to do nearly as much math, you might be interested in LOOT - although the lack of dice is certainly a big change.

Slugblaster, by Wilkie’s Candy Lab.

In the small town of Hillview, teenage hoverboarders sneak into other dimensions to explore, film tricks, go viral, and get away from the problems at home. It’s dangerous. It’s stupid. It’s got parent groups in a panic. And it’s the coolest thing ever.

This is Slugblaster. A table-top rpg about teenagehood, giant bugs, circuit-bent rayguns, and trying to be cool.

Forged in the Dark games can be tricky to introduce to a new table, but Slugblaster is one of a few that I think can do the job. It’s a streamlined version of the system, that takes away a lot of the crunch that comes from Stats, Position, and Effect, and boils it all down to Kick and Boost. It also streamlines harm into 2 levels of slams, and keeps stress and downtime to a procedure that you can follow step-by-step when you finish a run. Finally character creation is very easy: you only make few choices in terms of abilities, and many of these choices are descriptive, rather than mechanical.

One thing I’ve noticed about games with “simpler” rules systems is that they typically do require a bunch of improv, which can be scary for new GMs. Slugblaster isn’t that different in this regard, but it does have a few things you as a GM can prepare beforehand if you want to make things easier for yourself. For example, you can set up your map of the different dimensions beforehand, including the doorways that the teens can get through. If you know that the teens get back to your home dimension without going through Operablum, then you can prepare a few location - specific threats to confound the teens as they try to get back in time for dinner.

Another strength of these games is that typically, if a player wants to do something, they just have to be able to describe how they’d do it - you can then work backwards using the gear & resources on your sheet to give you some dice to roll, as well as the logic of the game world, to figure out what happens next.

Lady Blackbird, by John Harper

Lady Blackbird is on the run from an arranged marriage to Count Carlowe. She hired a smuggler skyship, The Owl, to take her from her palace on the Imperial world of Ilysium to the far reaches of the Remnants, so she could be with her once secret lover: the pirate king Uriah Flint.

Lady Blackbird is the first game I ever played, and it’s a game I fell for - hard. It involves rolling pools of dice that you pull from descriptive collections of tags assigned to pre-generated characters. It simplifies game-play by taking away the step of character creation, and gives the group a pretty solid story to pick up and follow wherever your heart may lead.

While the rules of the game are fairly simple, I think that as a GM, you’re going to need to be comfortable with a fair bit of improv to make this work. The game has some excellent pieces of advice on how to come up with scenes for the characters, and even includes some example complications to throw at the party. I’m really glad this was my first game because from the beginning, it affirmed that roleplaying games are a communal experience, and even if the characters and the starting scenario are already written for the group, the players have a lot of freedom to decide who their characters are, and what they’re going to value.

Liminal Horror, by Goblin Archives.

There’s a strange comfort to ambiguity. To stand at the threshold between states of what was and what’s next, to inhabit the places of transition. But you’re never truly alone here. There are things that hunger within the dark places. Strange creatures and mysteries lie in wait and tumbling into the wrong place at the wrong time may put you on the path towards doom.

Grab your flashlights and blood splattered jackets as you try to make it through the night. Beware, snapping bone and rending flesh are often the simplest outcome. While there may be great power within these places… not all mysteries can be solved and not everyone can be saved. Above all, there are fates far worse than death.

LIMINAL HORROR is a rules-lite, adaptable Survival-Horror roleplaying game about normal characters and their struggles against the things that go bump in the night. The game focuses on surviving the weird and Investigating horrors while blending simple, old-school inspired rules with modern, narrative first principles. Survival is not guaranteed and those that do make it through the night are often forever changed.

In Liminal Horror, character creation is rather quick, often easily generated using a few dice rolls. For most tasks, your characters will roll a d20 and try to get a number lower than one of their three stats, so when you get started, teaching the game should be pretty simple. Of course, since it’s a horror game, there’s more than just trying to roll under a stat: characters will find themselves subject to the consequences of being exposed to horrors that are far beyond the limits of human experience. As a result, characters will find themselves dealing with two different kinds of harm: stress & fallout. These two harm systems will make the stakes feel real, and they’ll also inflict changes on your characters as you play.

Liminal Horror has a few things going for it. The basic rules are fairly straightforward, but they’re also free. The game is meant to be paired with pre-written adventures, which often include place descriptions, NPCs, and adventure-specific consequences to torture the characters with. A lot of the adventures available come with a price tag, but if you want to try out the system, there’s a couple of free ones out there - I recommend Messenger National Park, by capacityforwonder.

For the Ship And Its Crew, by Adeline Fowl Games.

We've crewed this Ship for years together. We've seen wondrous sights, gotten ourselves into seemingly insurmountable trouble, and have owed our fair share of creds to the wrong people. And yet, still, we fly. But after all these years, our past may be catching up with us. As the missiles tear across starlit space, we'll be forced to ask ourselves: What will we do, for the Ship and its Crew?

This is a hack of For the Queen, which mostly involves answering prompts, using something like a card deck, or in this case, a digital hosting service. Your group is telling a story by taking turns answering questions, which makes the game fairly easy to teach, even to people who don’t have a lot of roleplaying experience.

These kinds of games can also be played very quickly, which might also make it easier to introduce to folks who aren’t used to sitting around a grid and calculating resources for 2+ hours.

Other Recommendation Posts To Check Out…

Easy To Teach Recommendation Post

First Time GMs Recommendation Post

Little Reading or Writing Required Recommendation Post

[creamflix]

I'd like to request literally anything with dr ratio. The way you write him has me foaming in the mouth 🙏

content: established relationship with ratio, no reader gender specified, fluff and crack  thank you for the request anon! hope you like it <3 i wasn't sure if you wanted an nsfw one or not... so i just decided to keep it a lil' silly. feel free to send in another request if you'd like anything/a nsfw drabble in specific. — general masterlist ☆

the aquarium was your idea. ratio wasn’t against it — he rarely was when it came to you — but you had a sneaking suspicion that the allure of his encyclopedic brain being put to good use played a part in his agreement.

what you hadn’t accounted for was just how much he’d use it.

“yellow fish!” you cried, pointing at a vibrant creature darting past the glass.

“paracanthurus hepatus,” he corrected instantly, eyes following it with the precision of a trained biologist. “commonly known as the regal tang. it’s not technically yellow; that shade is more of a goldenrod or mustard.”

you turned to him with a pout. “goldenrod fish doesn’t have the same energy, babe.”

he raised an eyebrow, his lips quirking just slightly — ratio’s version of a grin. “and yet it would be more accurate.”

you stuck your tongue out at him and moved on, weaving through the crowd of kids marveling at jellyfish.

“blue fish!” you exclaimed as soon as you spotted another tank, tapping the glass lightly.

“pomacanthus paru,” he chimed again, standing behind you with his hands resting casually in his coat pockets. “blue angelfish. they’re omnivorous, by the way —”

you turned to him, a mock frown plastered on your face. “veritas, i swear, if you give me one more fun fact, i’m gonna dunk you in this tank.”

his laugh was a low rumble, and he stepped closer, the warmth of his body brushing against yours as he bent slightly to meet your eyes. “admit it. you’d miss my ‘fun facts.’”

you squinted at him, feigning seriousness. “not if i replace you with a yellow fish. they’re prettier.”

he hummed in mock contemplation, his hand ghosting over your waist. “fair. though, for the record, paracanthurus hepatus is primarily blue, not yellow. you'd probably miss me correcting you too.”

“you’re such a nerd,” you teased, nudging him lightly.

he tilted his head, his gaze softening. “and yet you’re the one who insisted on coming to a place that’s basically a playground for me.”

caught. you shrugged, trying to play it cool. “i didn’t realize i was signing up for a ted talk with my boyfriend.”

“you could’ve just asked for the romance package instead,” he replied smoothly, his voice dipping into something quieter but no less teasing.

you blinked up at him, feeling your cheeks flush. “there’s a romance package?”

he smirked, leaning just enough to make your heart do that ridiculous fluttery thing it always did around him. “not officially, but i’m open to requests.”

your retort caught in your throat as he gently brushed a strand of hair behind your ear, his hand lingering at the side of your face.

“shark!” a child yelled nearby, breaking the moment.

you both turned, watching a sleek predator glide past the tank.

“carcharhinus limbatus,” ratio murmured, his lips curving as he glanced back at you. “that’s a blacktip shark.”

“if i call it a ‘toothy fish,’ are you gonna dump me?” you whispered, trying not to laugh.

his expression softened even more, his eyes crinkling in amusement. “never. but you’ll owe me one accurate name by the end of today.”

you grinned, leaning into him. “deal. but only because i like you.”

“like?” he repeated, mock offended. “not love?”

you pulled back slightly, pretending to consider. “depends. will i get more random shark facts if i say love?”

he chuckled, looping an arm around your shoulders as you walked to the next exhibit. “unfortunately for you, those are non-negotiable.”

“then i guess you’re stuck with me, goldenrod fish corrections and all.”

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[twenty-qs]

I find it SO interesting how Viktor and Ekko present different versions of an “underground utopia.” It represents their different philosophies of technology as well as their approach to environmentalism.

On the one hand, we have Viktor. He believes science will save us, specifically science that augments the human form. I think a lot about the hex claw as his vision of “improving lives”—because honestly, Heimerdinger was right. That thing is a blatant safety hazard. It is not ready for a mass rollout. Also, the only thing it would accomplish is making the exploitation of labor in the Undercity more efficient—it makes the individual more productive, and as Jayce puts it, enables the individual to work longer and harder, while doing nothing to actually improve the working conditions and rights of the laborer. Everybody knows what happened after the well-intentioned invention of the cotton gin, right? But Viktor was blind to this because he had spent so long separated from life in Zaun, because of his desperate ambition, and because he does genuinely believe that science is Good. Especially science that augments the human body’s capabilities.

This carries over to his Herald arc. “The goal of evolution is to supersede nature.” His idea of a utopia is a world where the pains and horrors of the human body are obsolete—where bio-engineered plants can flourish, where violence doesn’t exist simply because nobody thinks to engage in it. He’s the type who would look at a chemical spill and say, hey, we can engineer bacteria that can break the chemicals back down to something safe. It’s great, it’s a good thing. But it doesn’t address root causes, it just enables people to keep spilling those chemicals. It remains to be seen exactly what the price of his utopia was, but it’s notable that his version of “superseding” nature is fundamentally unsustainable. Once Viktor dies, once he takes his power and inspiration and knowledge away, the whole commune dies.

On the other hand, you have Ekko. He also builds a non-violent utopia in the middle of the Undercity with a culture centered around nature. But his idea of utopia is living with nature, stewarding it, taking only enough to live by and paying forward with the rest. His technology is simply part of the tree’s ecosystem. The hoverboard is explicitly inspired by the firelights. Bugs play a central role in the ecosystem by helping to pollinate plants across large distances. Ekko’s people use the technology to move around the tree to help take care of it, and to move across the Undercity and spread their ideology. He doesn’t interfere with or supersede nature. He sort of just—shepherds it. And when Ekko disappears, the Firelights are seen functioning perfectly well without him. That’s what sustainability means.

Ekko focuses on social inequities of the impact of technology. If he saw a chemical spill, he’d go to whoever spilled it and try to make them stop. Root causes.

Ideally they’d work together. After all, Ekko can’t help people who are too far gone on Shimmer. But I’ll be very interested to see if we get some Ekko and Viktor interactions in act 3.

[orchestrated-haunting]

using my classics degree for good. i cannot wait for 3.0

my notes from my first watch through of "Amphororeus' Saga of Heroes" under the cut. please note that i did this at 8am with minimal double and triple checking of sources

Aglaea- Aglaea in mythology is the child of zeus and is one of the three Charities in Greek myth; according to Dionysiaca she is one of the "dancers of Orchomenus" who tend to Aphrodite. Helped Aphrodite in her attempt to weave better than Athena by holding and passing Aphrodite the yarn. She also acts as Aphrodite's messanger. Her drip marketing also mentioned her connection to romance so her being a stand in for Aphrodite feels like a easy call

Tribbie- hermes or hecate (likely a combination) she's a messenger like hermes, however the description of "the three-faced" is usually used in description of Hecate goddess of the crossroads

Anaxa- likely the athena parallel as said to have enough knowledge to refute faith and is capable of killing gods. this is in line with athena's domains of wisdom and the logical side of combat; eyepatch is similar to odin of norse mythology as he exchanged one of his eyes for all the knowledge in the world; Anax is the attic greek word for "tribal cheif, lord, or military leader"; there are also several notable figures who have the prefix anax- in their name Anaxandridas II (a king of sparta) and anaxagoras and anaxarchus (both philosphers)

Hyacine - name from hyacinthus, lover of apollo and where we get the name of hyacinths from; she also "severs dawn from dusk" which makes me feel more than confident in her being the apollo parallel

Mydei- ares parallel, lion symbolism is common with warriors in ancient greece; hercules wore the skin of a lion he killed. the rest of it is vibes based but look at him; could not find any strong name parallels immediately as both Medea and Midas do not have many war-like contributions; however medea is close enough to mydei in pronunciation. medea was the daughter of Aeetes and lover of Jason from the argonauts and granddaughter to the sun god Helios; fire motifs, could be connection to hephaestus but i'd need more before i make that call; japanese version uses Mydeimos which points to Deimos, the god of terror and twin brother of Phobos the god of fear, both of which are children of Ares and Aphrodite (thank you @/integraseras for connection)

Cipher- fleet-footed hunter and said to "make time stop" while i can't think of any deity that specifically can do that the fleet-footed hunter aspect along with her being feminine strongly implies to me an artemis parallel; "make time stop" is interesting because in some stories and accounts the gods could stop time to communicate with a single hero or person without others noticing their presence

Castorice- "daughter of the river styx" and other death motives makes her almost certainly Hades; this is likely unrelated but one of the twins of the Diocusi (gemini twins) is named Castor however they are the children of Zeus, however castor was born mortal and pollux was born immortal, eventually they made a deal in which they would spend half of the time with the gods and the other half in the underworld

Phainon- couldnt find one of the olympians that fight however the god Phaenon is the sky god of Cronus (the planet Saturn); name means "bright" or "shining"; this could also be our Zeus figure due to Phaenon being called "the star of Jove" (Jove being another name for Zeus in roman myth)

(following names were from the video description but no other info was given)

Hysilens- name possibly comes from the combination of the gods Silenus and Hysminai; silenus is the god of wine, drunkenness, and the forest while also the foster father of Dionysus. Hysminai is the personification of combat; likely stand in for Dionysus

Cerydra- name has some parallels to the hydra the lake monster of Lerna in the Argolid, cer- could possibly (very unlikely) come from cerberus; my money would be on them being the parallel for posideon; the hydra was also one of hercules 12 labors and the lake Lerna was said to be an enterence to the underworld, possibly connecting cerberus in there, as cerberus is the guard dog of the underworld

Two unnamed characters: also there Gods that haven't been explicitly shown: Hera, Hestia, Demeter and Hephaestus. I could see hoyo combining Hera and Hestia into a single character of marriage, hearth and home

Other notes:

the gods were said to have gold blood

Amphoreus from the greek vessel style of a container with a long neck and two handles used to store oil, wine, milk, or grain. Amphorae were sometimes used as grave markers or as containers for funeral offerings or human remains and Amphora was also used as a unit of measure

the titans in the trailer = titans in myth; the conflict that follows is basically the equivalent of the war in mythology between the olympians and the titans

[twig-gy]

it’s not inherently mischaracterization to write hms gore what matters is the way you do it. gore is a tool that can be amazing or horrible just like any other depending on the execution. pun. gore is not necessarily more shallow than anything else. no one is going around saying ‘stop writing fluff that’s shallow and only meant to make you feel good’, so why does this apply to gore? if this sounds either biased or targeted, that’s because it is :)

less briefly:

yes, gore can stem from Nothing, or mischaracterization. it can also stem from traits that the character has.

sure maybe ‘soul STABS MIND 3000 TIMES IN THE CHEST because ???? uh why not’ is a bad usage of gore, but consider ‘soul stabs mind to punish him for doing something minor (because he is desperate for heart and mind to stop their fights at all costs, and feels as if he has no power, and feels as if the only way to gain power is by making them afraid of him)’.

maybe this doesn’t fit with your specific idea of soul, but there is still character depth there.

<SIDE TANGENT>

what mischaracterization even MEANS is dependent on person to person, because, you know, PEOPLE GET DIFFERENT THINGS FROM THIS ALBUM, and they INTERPRET THE CHARACTERS DIFFERENTLY. additionally, what seems like ‘mischaracterization’ can just be what the author thinks they would react like when placed into a situation, which can be incredibly different from how they usually act! for example, both of my aus are based on how i think the characters would react whenever placed into situation x

(with maybe their characters tweaked a little, which is fine sometimes as long as you aren’t going to claim it’s canon. it’s fine to have headcanons. it’s fine to have different versions of hms(w) that aren’t specifically au. and people who are mad about it - which is a group that may include me, sometimes, i am aware - can be mad! and that doesn’t mean you’re wrong and that doesn’t mean you have to get out the ukelele and be like i’m sorry for having fun with the characters (when you Should be having fun with the characters and if you aren’t then maybe. stop?))

and in my aus they are incredibly different from canon hms! which isn’t a bad thing, it is the point!

anyway you aren’t morally bad for talking about the characters without cited sources. (the annoying part is whenever you act like you /are/ being objectively correct, and right about everything, whenever you’re clearly Doing Shit To Them (also sometimes maybe consider making an oc and whether that would be more fun than saying it’s hms. however you aren’t. morally corrupt. for not making an oc. it’s fine))

(again please don’t say people are morally corrupt for being wrong about the characters. they aren’t. it’s annoying but it’s not bad morally, and they don’t need to get hosed down for it. It’s Fine)

</SIDE TANGENT> (yes i can reclaim the html angle brackets because i know html /joke)

again, compare ‘heart and mind snuggle and don’t argue ever because ???? why not’ and ‘heart and mind snuggle and don’t argue ever because they’ve resolved their conflict, and don’t feel like they need to anymore’ (an attempt to keep the level of fluff while adding a reason- though i admit i’m not good at writing pure fluff), or ‘heart and mind snuggle and don’t argue ever because they’re tired of the pain and want just one moment of peace’ (something more similar to what i write that keeps bittersweetness/tension there).

if reasonless gore is bad, why isn’t reasonless fluff bad? if reasonless gore is ‘immature’, then isn’t is reasonless fluff also ‘immature’?

sure, maybe one is less shocking or more to your tastes than the other: it’s fine to have preferences. what i don’t agree with is saying one is horrible and the other isn’t.

my opinion is that we should stop saying anything that one writes is morally bad: and if you want to anyway, just keep the complaining (because that’s what this is) to friends you complain with, or discord servers meant for complaining, or complain on your own blog without maintagging it, rather than trying to set these rules of what one should and should not write upon the entire fanbase.

thank you (i bow and leave the stage) (ALSO STOP ACTING LIKE IT’S NOVEL TO THINK THAT HEART ISN’T AN UWU BABY OR MIND ISN’T A DEMON IN FRONT OF THE ENTIRE FANBASE WE’VE BEEN OVER THIS. WE WERE GOING OVER THIS LAST YEAR. I AM SO TIRED OF PEOPLE MAKING THESE POSTS AND EVERYONE CONGRATULATING THEM OVER IT AS IF IT’S DESERVING OF THE NOBEL PRIZE)

[gr0guwu]

Finally I get to talk about Theology in the context of the owl house.

First it is interessting to see that Belos is generally the most religious character. He started off as a witch hunter, a position related to Christianty and Purity. His stated motivation is killing all Witches for the crime of being sinful by nature, all in the name of Christianity. Even when he starts his cult worshipping the Titan, it takes a form resembeling an exagerated version of the catholic Church with him at the top, the only one able to speak to the Titan, specifically in a way where he gets to control everyone under him. As you mentioned, he also tried to make Caleb his own twisted Jesus-Figure.

And the big Irony is that even by the standards of his own christian Ideology, he is a sinner. You very much cannot be a sinner by blood (See the Good Samaritan and the Acts of the Apostles) and even if that were the case, killing people for being Sinners is also a Sin (See Matthew 5,38-42 (Turning the other cheek) and John 8,7( “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”)). Also most obviously, Belos is quite Ok with using magic, if he does it himself.

And that makes one thing clear: Belos doesn't really care about Religion or even Witchhunting. Even when almost all witches were toys for the Collector, it was not enough. The one Thing he cares about is Control. This is made clear with his Possesion-Powers and his constant Manipulation, seen in Luz, the Collector and especially Hunter. And it is never enough until he posses the Titan, the God he pretended to worship.

And this is the whole Point. Belos is a satire of organized Religion and of Cults. He doesn't actually care about his own teachings beyond using them as Tools to control others, as so many others do, who use Religion and Faith in the same way. He truly is a "false prophet, who come[s] to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly [is a] ravenous wolf." (Mt 7,15).

And the biggest Irony is that the Titan works against him. He gives Luz his powers to help her defeat Belos. "On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ " (Mt 7,22-23)

So, yeah, I had a lot of toughts about this.

no one talk to me or else ill start infodumping about the owl house's references to european folklore and biblical stories, usually as an act of subversion or making fun of belos for caring so hard. (i know its not that deep but cmon. you think eda wouldnt love to call herself Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth *explosion sound effects*) specifically lately ive been thinking about hunter and belos as an interpretation of the tale of blue beard

[scribescrawls]

Thinking about Transformers One Liege Maximo and how he never went bad in TFOne. In the wiki in other versions I saw he had the moniker of “The Prime of Lies” and I like to think he still was in TFOne, but instead of using those skills for evil he used them to protect his fellow Primes and Cybertron. Liege Maximo using his skills in manipulation, scheming, and lying to create strategies that help them get the upper hand in the war with the Quintessons that might be underhanded but ultimately saves more lives. But also sometimes lying to motivate others or cheer them up as well in terms of keeping up morale (for example imagine him lying to someone that he asked Primus himself to give a person luck to succeed in a task that they are too scared to do that helps them succeed in doing it even though he never asked Primus anything. But he does it because he knows the person had the ability to do the task already just that their fears and self doubt were holding them back so he lies to give them the confidence they need. Liege Maximo going ‘I told them Primus has given them for this specific task his blessing of luck’ and his fellow Primes side eye him like ‘Bro you know that’s not how that works’ and he responds ‘I know that, but it worked look how much more confident the bot is!’). And yes sometimes these plans he makes toe the line of what is morally right, but that’s what he has his fellow Primes for. I imagine he and Prima sometimes get into arguments about what is going too far or if certain strategies cross a line ethically, but I like to think that in this version instead of it tearing them apart it makes the team stronger as they find compromises that combine both their ideals until they find a plan that they both agree to with everyone.

I’m also so fascinated by the different possibilities of the High Guard personally knowing the Thirteen Primes. I like the idea of TFOne Liege Maximo being a mentor figure for Starscream in the past before Sentinel’s betrayal and kind of took Starscream on as his personal student in a way because he saw himself in the other. Liege Maximo going “oh he just like me for real” seeing a younger Starscream who is not yet leader of the High Guard lie to an enemy to get them to lower their guard and when they hesitate to kill him he stabs the enemy in the back. Him observing Starscream use cunning in battle to win his fights that keeps himself and those under his command alive and thinks this one reminds me of me and he has potential to be great. Liege Maximo becoming his mentor and over the years they also become good friends. I like to headcanon that Liege Maximo loves to cause problems on purpose for his own amusement and likes to pull pranks on his fellow Primes with Amalgamous who is also a known prankster. I imagine the other Primes are exasperatedly fond of their antics. I like to think once Liege Maximo takes Starscream as his protégé he ropes him into helping them pull pranks with them.

I’m fascinated by the potential of TFOne Starscream before Sentinel’s betrayal still being a manipulator, liar, and schemer but at the same time someone who was loyal to the Thirteen Primes and believed in the cause they were fighting for of defending Cybertron. Like I still think he’s someone who would put himself first in terms of saving his own life, but I think he also does care for those under him and does his best to keep them alive too. I think he’s always been strong on self preservation, but I also think he lives by a certain honor code and has certain principles he stubbornly abides by even if most people would at first glance think he’d sell you out for one corn chip. I think this is most telling if we look at how not once did Starscream try to join Sentinel or the Quintessons by pledging his loyalty to them to save his own skin even if it might of been easier and instead chooses to live 50 cycles in hiding/on the run being hunted down on the dangerous surface with a planet whose flow of energon has stopped and still tries to sabotage Sentinel from the shadows and hates his guts for the betrayal. He did fail in attacking/killing Sentinel, but I think it’s important to note that he successfully kept everyone alive at the same time too.

After Sentinal’s betrayal and watching the Primes be killed in front of him in addition to being hunted down on the surface together with the rest of the High Guard for 50 cycles I think he slowly becomes disillusioned with the world and more cruel and ruthless as he does whatever is needed for their survival.

I headcanon that Megatronus Prime was usually the one commanding the High Guard and directing them in battle and that Starscream did really look up to him too and admired his strength. But I headcanon that Megatronus Prime was so strong that his approach to battle is very charge head on and brutally beat your opponent into the ground as a way to protect everyone else. A warrior who charges straight at the enemy and gets things done brutally and efficiently, very similar to D-16/Megatron’s fighting style. However, I think Megatronus was also way more experienced and was also able to direct the High Guard in a way that worked with multiple differing fighting styles that meshed different approaches to maximize the strength of their fighting force. (Which is partially why I think Starscream followed Megatron in the end, one he did manage to rip Sentinel in half, but also he might have thought D-16/Megatron had the potential to be a leader worth following and associated any similarities with a sense of hope that Megatron might become someone like his past leader Megatronus). Meanwhile, I think Starscream is more of an ‘analyze your opponent and then strike using your wits to best take them down’ kind of fighter especially if you can’t beat them in straightforward combat. I like to think Liege Maximo also fights like that and might have been the one to give Starscream extra fighting lessons when he notes the similarities of how Starscream likes to fight. And if you ever saw them fight side by side you could probably see Liege Maximo’s fighting style reflected in the way Starscream moves.

I also think with this headcanon it potentially adds a bit of tragic irony that this version of Megatronus and Liege Maximo never turned bad becoming “The Fallen” etc, but those who greatly admired them and tried to embody their legacy sort of become the fallen ones down the line.

[the-100-days-of-junkan]

Day 52

What the hell happened when i was coloring this one- Oh hi there! Looks like today we’ve got ourself more of Junko showering Mikan in affection!~ 

I don’t know why it looks like I had a live sturgeon slammed into my spinal cord while I colored it but that’s neither here nor there.

I’m writing this post on Day 31, so here’s a time traveling HAPPY HALLOWEEN! I also want to take this opportunity again to say thank you all so much for the kind words you leave on these posts, it all really adds up to help me stay in fighting shape to keep working on art and really balances out on the amount of energy I burned up during the 9 months making this project.

I’ve probably yapped about this before, but I’m not fuckin crosschecking 51 previous days to double check, but if I have any goals with this project it’s this.

A!. Give back to the small community of people who’ve kept me fed with either their fanart or fanfic for this highly niche version of the ship. I think you all have a pretty good idea of who you are in specific but I can’t emphasize enough that this project wouldn’t be happening without ya’ll making my brain deep fry in my skull from the levels of obsession I had for these two getting to be happy. This is my thanks to ya’ll! 

And

B!. I do this in the hopes that it’ll inspire people to make more art of these two, whether drawn or in a literary sense. My hope would be soft given what I’ve been doing for this project, but even if it ends up laying a bit outside my lane it’ll do my heart good to know I inspired anything at all with what I’ve been doing here. And hey, is this partially influenced by the fact that I’m really desperate for more junkan art because there’s only so much my hands can do before they break?

. . . maybe! But while I may be a greedy woman, I’m an artist first and foremost!~ It is my primary goal and desire to bring joy to the masses and inspire the artistic hearts of people everywhere, whether it be people who’ve been in this game longer than I, or people who were like me and hid away in the shadows taking in the current amount of Junkan in the world and eternally spinning it in their mind!

And the funnier third option, the people who randomly came across this and accidentally found out that they’re really into this, y’know like me. But that’s a story for another day!~ . . . and by that i mean like day 98 yeah you’re not getting the proper origin story for awhile.

As always, Reblogs, Comments, and Little Notes in the Tags are appreciated!~ They always make my day!~

[lupinescribbler]

Been thinking recently about this oddly specific trope of a character being emotionally vulnerable or honest in order to be able to connect with a kid they empathize with. I have slightly mixed feelings about it. On one hand it can be overdone, to where the child feels like a cardboard cutout just to elaborate on the protagonist’s traumatic backstory, but there are also a lot of cases that I liked it or thought it was done in an impactful way.

so I figured I’d walk through a handful of examples of this trope (does it have a name???) and give my personal thoughts on each. Spoilers for the episodes referenced of course. Because of image limit this will be part 1 of 2 and I’ll link the second when I get it up.

Supernatural S01E03.

This is one of my favorite iterations of this. Lucas's turmoil, fear, and mutism were portrayed with enough effort and thoughtfulness for him not to just feel like a cardboard cutout, and the way Dean interacted with him felt in-character while still showing a softer side to him. There's also a strong plot reason (Lucas being the only eye-witness) to drive their interactions, making each scene feel like it was striving for an important purpose instead of just ham-fisting 'traumatic backstory' angst.

The scene in the park is what really starts it off. The guy who couldn't name three children he knew a couple scenes earlier, has to try to coax answers out of a traumatized mute kid about said trauma. We see Dean meeting Lucas where he is (draws with him), tries to identify what Lucas might be feeling, ("Well, maybe you don't think anyone will listen to you.") reassures ("I want you to know that I will.") and doesn't push it when Lucas seems unforthcoming.

While this scene overall is very soft and endearing, we get very little of Dean talking explicitly about his own trauma, just one vague line "When I was your age, I saw something." The whole scene is about what Lucas is feeling. Dean's feelings are there too, the audience is already supposed to be drawing parallels, but they are kept on the peripheral.

Then later in the episode we get the next Lucas and Dean scene. We've watched someone else die, upping the stakes. Here is where we really get the emotional vulnerability from Dean in a few blunt, heartbreaking, lines. Even more than that, we get a glimpse at Dean's why. Why the bravado, why he is the way he is. We also have this whole confession observed by Dean's younger brother, which -- trust me as an older sibling -- is excruciating.

Overall I think this works because a) Dean has a strong reason to be this emotionally vulnerable, there are literally lives resting on his ability to get through to Lucas. b) it had the space to be built up in multiple scenes throughout an entire episode and c) Dean is the exact type of character that needs some sort of push to be this emotionally vulnerable and earnest, so the trope just fits.

Magnum PI S01E01

This one is what I'd consider a slightly meh version of the trope. Not trying to offend anyone who found this scene specifically meaningful, but it fell flat to me. The intro joking about the dogs was good, Magnum trying to comfort his dead friend’s son was a good idea, but the “when I was your age, I lost my dad too” kinda lost me. I get he was trying to empathize with the kid, but it ended up feeling like the show was just trying to be like “look! He has a dead dad!”. Additionally the character of this kid felt flat and I don’t remember if he ever even cropped back up in the story outside of this episode or ever had a shred of personality.

In my opinion it might have worked better if they’d had Magnum talk about Nuzo instead of his father. Nuzo is the person both he and the kid cared about and lost, and while it still might have felt cheesy I think it would have felt more anchored to what the rest of the episode is about and helped to get the audience to empathize even more with the grief over a dead friend that drove the whole narrative for the pilot.

I really enjoyed the show overall, don’t get me wrong, and I’ll have another example of this trope in part two of this which — spoilers — I enjoyed a lot.

Would love to hear other people’s opinions of this if anyone sees it, and I invite disagreement.

[carabas]

Sorting out Veilguard thoughts. This is very long, I had mixed feelings about Solas's endings and this is me trying to make Solas's actions and motivations make sense to me through quotes and bullet points.

Basic starting principle of the game: Solas is trapped by regret. We left him at the end of Trespasser heading out on the din'anshiral but not exactly enthusiastic about it, he's conflicted, he doesn't want to break the world again but he feels he has to, the whole plot here grows out of that. He tried to save the world and woke up finding he'd created a nightmare hell world a la the Inquisitor's trip to the terrible future version of Redcliffe, and it's his responsibility to fix that.

Specifically, the problems that make this a nightmare hell world:

The Blight's still here!! The whole point was to trap the Blight and yet it's still leaking into the world, his world-saving plan didn't even get that part right, what the fuck.

Mortality. First spirits took bodies which he had mixed feelings about to begin with, and which was the crime against the Titans which ultimately resulted in the Blight which I can't imagine improved his feelings about it - but also now they die, he is personally responsible for generations of people being permanently trapped in bodies which die, he didn't even want a body in the first place. "Your legends are half-right. We were immortal. It was not the arrival of humans that caused us to begin aging. It was me. The Veil took everything from the elves, even themselves."

A world of Tranquil. It's not just how long mortals live, it's the way they live, with no connection to the Fade outside their dreams. "You saw the remains of Vir Dirthara. The library was intrinsically tied to the Fade, and the Veil destroyed it. There were countless other marvels, all dependent on the presence of the Fade, all destroyed." Instead of those marvels, there's a fear and distrust and ignorance of all things Fade - and there are few things that frustrate Solas as much as ignorance - and that fear of the Fade naturally results in the fear of mages, the whole central plot of DA2, the struggle for mage freedom which Solas was vocal about and which was a big factor in his approval in Inquisition.

The effects on the spirits of the Fade, who Solas sees as people when most of the mortal world does not. ...You know what, I'm just going to copy-paste some longer quotes from Inquisition for this one because this is something that wasn't touched on much at all in Veilguard.

Even in Solas's very early-game conversations with the Inquisitor, he tells us exactly how he sees the effects of the Veil on spirits and how the mortal world relates to them:

Inquisitor: I'd like to know more about the Veil.

Solas: Circle mages call it a barrier between this world and the Fade. But according to my studies in ancient elven lore, that is a vast oversimplification. Without it… Imagine if spirits entered freely, if the Fade was not a place one went but a state of nature like the wind.

Inquisitor: It sounds like it would be wonderful.

Solas: And dangerous, but… yes. A world where imagination defines reality, where spirits are as common as trees or grass. Instead, spirits are strange and fearful, and the Fade is a terrifying world touched only by mages and dreamers. I am glad that I am not alone in seeing the beauty of such a world, along with the obvious peril.

And:

Inquisitor: I’d like to know more about demons.

Solas: The Chantry says that demons hate the natural world and seek to bring their chaos and destruction to the living. But such simplistic labels misconstrue their motivations and, in so doing, do all a great disservice. Spirits wish to join the living, and a demon is that wish gone wrong.

Inquisitor: Is there a way to coexist? To live with them, if not in peace, at least without such active confrontation?

Solas: Not in the world we know today. The Veil creates a barrier that makes true understanding most unlikely. But the question is a good one, and it matters that you thought to ask.

And this was the codex entry description of demonic possession in the first two games, as written by a senior enchanter from Ostwick:

Why do demons seek to possess the living? History claims they are malevolent spirits, the first children of the Maker, angry at their creator for turning from them and jealous of those creations he considered superior. They stare across the Veil at the living and do not understand what they see, yet they know they crave it. They desire life, they pull the living across the Veil when they sleep and prey on their psyche with nightmares. Whenever they can, they cross the Veil into our world to possess it outright. We know that any demon will seek to possess a mage, and upon doing so will create an abomination.

And this was Cole's reaction to discovering the history of the Veil in Trespasser:

Cole: The Veil isn’t real. It’s false, fake, fabricated to forbid. Isn’t it wonderful? It means I belong here! Helping, healing the hurt! I’m not a wrong thing, a wreck, a ruin. I’m what I should be!

...We're repeatedly told throughout the series that spirits desire to be with the living and the Veil is preventing that, for good or ill. Rook's team cares about this in terms of the threat of their world being destroyed by a sudden flood of demons, but from Solas's point of view the spirits belonged here to begin with and it's his mistake that makes coexistence impossible.

But at the same time, the first three games were set in the South - Veilguard shows us the Mourn Watch and Rivaini seers who do coexist with spirits, even with the Veil still in place. Other characters are less comfortable with this, but we're not getting anywhere near the same focus on the fear of spirits and mages here that we saw in the South. The game's just... not really interested in discussing this, we're not focusing on these ongoing effects of the Veil right now in this game about Solas trying to bring the Veil down, sure there's the occasional haunting and plenty of demons to fight but we're treating the ability to coexist with spirits as basically a solved problem in northern Thedas. And we've already put the mage rights plotline to rest in Inquisition. We're done, we're moving on, those parts of Solas's motivation are still important in that Solas's attitude toward spirits is important, but focusing on those problems is not a priority right now.

So of Solas's motivations that we saw back in Inquisition, the outlook now... the Blight's a problem, everyone's on the same page about the Blight being a problem, and in the good ending Solas winds up working on that aspect of the problem - but his other motivations, although they may still be problems, do not look as huge and pressing in Veilguard as they did in Inquisition. We've seen cultures where people and spirits coexist even with the Veil in place; mages in the north seem to be doing fine, at least as far as my Nevarran mage Rook's experience goes, and even in the south the treatment of mages is no longer what it was in the first two games; and the wonders of the Fade may be great but there are also dangers, acknowledged by Solas, and if a lot of people would rather keep the dangers out than bring the wonders or the immortality back in... who has the right to decide that for the whole world?

That's become the sticking point here. It's not really about how to solve the ongoing problems created by the Veil... it's whether they're Solas's problems to solve. And there's plenty of reason for him to answer yes to that, he created the problem to begin with and few other living people even have the knowledge that the Veil is unnatural, much less the ability to fix it - but also, let's be real, his attempts at solving problems have had some extremely fucking questionable results thus far.

And the stance this story has taken is: Solas is imprisoned by regret. Whether the Veil should come down or not, the reason Solas specifically has to walk this path is because of regret. And this story's happiest ending that takes the most effort to unlock is trying to release him from the role his regrets have imprisoned him in. (Relevant parallel: Lucanis carrying his mental prison around with him to the point that Spite can't tell they ever left.)

It's not like the whole world has taken a vote and decided that the Veil is good and immortality/wonders/coexistence with the Fade are not worth it. Obviously the player character of Veilguard is firmly in favor of guarding said Veil, but in Trespasser and the Masked Empire, Solas had agents working for him; in Tevinter Nights, Solas's monster wolf form was followed by an army of Valor and Justice spirits; in Veilguard, Solas said he had a host of spirits ready to help when the Veil fell to minimize the loss of life. For all the reasons Solas believed the Veil must come down, there's room to believe there are other characters on both sides of the Veil who also see those as problems and would presumably still be working on those problems, although that's not the focus of this game. And more people know about the origins of the Veil now, the story of the gods and Titans.

Solas tried to share the truth with the Dalish when he first woke up, but it went badly then; we know the truth now. Maybe if Solas were just a wisdom spirit he could even have been satisfied by sharing that history and having the truth be heard without taking the whole fate of the world on himself - but Solas is not just a wisdom spirit, and he has been defined by both wisdom and pride. He took on a role he never wanted because Mythal asked it of him, he so hates when spirits are twisted away from their purpose and his got complicated the moment he first took a body. Having the truth heard isn't nearly enough to fix this situation, and he needs to fix it, it is his responsibility to fix it, he is trapped by his regrets.

Talking with Rook about Elgar'nan...

Solas: Can you see how he and I might frustrate one another?

Rook: The two of you are too much alike. Both of you want to be in charge.

Solas: I have no desire to be "in charge."

Rook: No, you just want to be able to correct anyone who's not doing everything the way you'd've done it.

Solas: (Chuckles) I see you have been observing me as well during these conversations.

...Rook and their team can come up with a very wide variety of opinions on Solas, but that line did seem to amuse Solas, Rook had a point with that one. That is the place where Solas's wisdom meets pride.

Rook: All right, I can see how you and Elgar'nan would hate each other.

Solas: He has always been what I most feared becoming. Callous and uncaring, his arrogance unchecked. To have that much power and no one to remind him that he could be wrong…

Rook: Well, he had you.

Solas: (Chuckles) And I suppose I had you.

Solas was afraid of becoming like Elgar'nan, more pride than wisdom. He could see the possibility of that happening, the same way spirits become demons. And in the final scene, if he's not convinced to turn away from his path and attempts to tear down the Veil, he sounds very much like Elgar'nan. In the trickery version, Rook calls him out on this and Solas argues against it but then he comes out with these extremely Elgar'nan-like lines:

Solas: You think yourself capable of judging me? I have faced things you could not possibly comprehend! You are a mortal! A mortal! And I am a--(Rook interrupts him by shoving him toward his prison, and then Solas 'chuckles bitterly') I am a fool…

Even more so if Rook fights him instead of tricking him, with Solas declaring that compared to you mortals, he is a god - which Solas was pretty emphatic about denying before. And maybe that's what he was starting to say in the trickery version too before he was interrupted, "I am a--" and then he had a moment to realize what he was saying.

He was a spirit originally, and spirits are changeable by beliefs and expectations, and in this game the attempt to tear down the Veil very much does change him, instantly. The game treats him as a spirit who is being twisted away from his purpose by the act of tearing down the Veil. More than that, his purpose has already been twisted for a very long time, he already had regrets about this in those memories of ancient Elvhenan, talking about how at least the Disruption spirits died without being twisted from their purpose. He was wisdom before he was pride.

So if the bad endings are about Solas being twisted away from his nature by the very thing he feels he must do to save the world - the good ending is the opposite. It's about bringing him closer to the spirit he used to be, by finally putting down the thing that has been twisting him up.

In the good ending, Rook tries to talk Solas around even before Lavellan and Mythal join in - Rook doesn't want to see the world go through even more pain on top of what Elgar'nan has done, the world is broken but breaking the world again is the wrong way to make up for the damage Solas has caused, Solas has a chance right now to save the world by saving the Veil - and this argument is actually tempting to Solas! It's not enough, but he does pause, he thinks about it, he's conflicted, he's been conflicted this whole time, he was already wrestling with this back in Inquisition when he had only just woken up and had only seen a little of this new world, he has never wanted to break the world. He believed he had to.

Solas: I cannot. To stop now would dishonor those I have wronged to come this far.

Lavellan: Even if those you've wronged asked you to stop?

Solas: Vhenan…

Lavellan: You think you've gone too far to come back, but you're wrong. I am here, walking the dinan'shiral with you!

Solas: I lied. I betrayed you.

Lavellan: I forgive you! All you have to do is stop.

Solas: Ir abelas, vhenan… But I cannot.

...He actually paused way longer for Rook's argument about breaking the world than for this. He is more emotional with Lavellan, this did affect him, but that wasn't a convincing argument. I lied, I betrayed you - she tells him she's with him and he gives her a list of reasons she shouldn't be, he can't let himself respond to this right now.

Solas: Long before we met, I failed my oldest friend. She died for that failure. If I leave the Veil in place, I am destroying the world she wanted. And I will have… She will have died for nothing.

He believes the Veil is destroying the world Mythal wanted - and they were the firstborn elves, she invited him to take a body, the union of spirits and the mortal world is integral to his memory of her.

Side note here. If Bellara is in your team when you and Solas are traveling together during the endgame, you get this conversation:

Bellara: All I really want to know is why you killed Mythal.

Solas: The Evanuris killed Mythal.

Bellara: Only the first time. The second time, she was in Flemeth's body, and she didn't want you to destroy the world to avenge her… But you killed her. Was it because she was willing to stop, and you weren't?

Solas: That was not Mythal. It was merely a fragment.

Bellara: Right. That you killed.

…He didn't answer her after that. And now, here at the end of the game, "I will have.... She will have died for nothing," the fact that he killed that merely a fragment of Mythal for this is sticking in his mind, and we saw his regret about that moment plastered on the wall of the Lighthouse, and he is imprisoned by that regret - however conflicted he might feel, he was firmly committed to this path the moment he killed Mythal for a second time.

The final straw, the moment he finally gives up his plan, isn't about the fate of the world at all:

Mythal: I pulled you from the Fade you loved and sent you into war. I used your wisdom as a weapon… and it broke you.

Solas: The things that I have done…

Mythal: Are not for you alone to bear, my friend. The many wrongs we did, we did together. I release you from my service.

For this, he is hunched over and small, like she broke him all over again - maybe he had the right idea and breaking something a second time is the way to fix it in his particular case. He was a wisdom spirit before she sent him to war, before he was the Dread Wolf, before he broke the world trying to save it. He has been at war with one thing or another for a very long time.

Here Lavellan says "There is no fate but the love we share," and he doesn't argue with her this time. He can't look at her yet. He makes a fist. He puts a hand to his brow - was Mythal's vallaslin there once? Lowers his head. Looks at the tear in the Veil. Now he finally looks at Lavellan and the other people standing in front of him, not that fragment of Mythal, Mythal is gone. And then he binds himself to the Veil.

He hasn't let go of his past mistakes, that's not what's happening. He's still got regrets. He is letting go of the Dread Wolf, the role that a spirit of wisdom was twisted into.

Solas: With every breath I take, I will protect the innocent from my past failures. The Titans' dreams are mad from their imprisonment. I cannot kill the blight, but I can help to soothe its anger. I will go and seek atonement.

And then he is finally able to respond to Lavellan's love for him, to make this journey together.

[the-witchhunter]

Apples in Caramel Bourbon Sauce

Want a delicious dessert? Want to up your game? Why not both? This recipe once literally got me laid, it’s that damn good, so use at your own discretion

Or not, I’m not your mother

Ingredients:

2 apples (gala or honeycrisp recommended)

1/2 cup - 3/4 cup sugar (depend on size of apples and thus the amount of sauce needed)

4 tablespoons butter (I use salted, if using unsalted I recommend a pinch of salt on the final step)

“A splash” of bourbon (couple tablespoons to a 1/4 cup)

1) core and cut apples. Peeling is optional. Smaller pieces will cook faster so I prefer cutting into 1/8 slices and cutting those slices I half, but theoretically you could just cut the apples in half. Just make them roughly the same size

2) have all your ingredients on hand. Seems silly to make this its own step? If you have to hunt down during the next step you risk burning and starting it over. Just have your stuff ready

3) in a dry frying pan, add sugar and heat on medium. DO NOT WALK AWAY! Heat until sugar is melted and caramelized. It’ll start to darken and at this stage it can go from perfect to burnt very quickly. Stir with wooden spoon if needed to prevent burning but it’ll likely clump. Just break up clumps and it’ll melt when it’s hot enough.

4) add the butter and stir to combine. At this point it’s a very rudimentary caramel sauce.

5) add apple. It’ll likely seem too thick and not coat the apples immediately but just let them cook, stirring occasionally until apples are tender. How long? Depends how big you made your apple chunks. Sauce will get thinner as it pulls out moisture from the apples 

6) fish out cooked apples once tender and set aside

7) reduce sauce for a minute or two

8) add splash of bourbon (not from the bottle directly) and cook until harsh alcohol taste is cooked off

Serve by itself or the recommended method of over a scoop of vanilla ice cream, still warm

Makes 2-4 servings

[meamiki]

Happy Anniversary In Stars and Time!! Have some Friend Quest based drawings :D

(These have specific quote picks related to them! And there's also a long ramble on why I like those specific quotes below if interested)

(And by long, I mean roughly 2k+ words of proper ramble total, so be warned before clicking keep reading this link right here to the rb!!)

[doverstar]

actually I love Tentoo and he is the Doctor and it was the only ending for Rose that worked and it is a huge gift to be able to have the man she loves grow old with her, they were always heading for that, y'all be quiet. I 100% understand the angst but it's okay, they're okay, good ending-

[marmota-b]

Further thoughts:

Polyester, nylon etc are plastics. They don't breathe or wick away moisture well. Don't choose them for summer projects, especially not if you're prone to sweating and overheating.

Lighterweight breezy wovens are better in hot weather than skintight knits. Try switching from T-shirts and tank tops to natural fibre blouses / shirts, and thank me later. ����

Personally, my sensory issues are precisely with the plastics (atopic ecsema, my skin is sensitive to their plastickyness). Usually they don't feel softer to me unless it's actually a plush fabric. Microfibre, rather than just polyester, and even then I'm obliged to be ashamed to say real fur feels better to me. Flipping and feeling through satin or gauzy garments in a thrift shop, I would always inevitably land on the rare actually silk one, or a rayon one. So it's not a universal truth that polyester's better for sensory reasons. Just like a cotton gauze and a cotton canvas are two very different things... fibre content does not tell you everything in this way. "Use fabrics you like" is the one universal truth when it comes to sensory issues! And another very good reason to shop in local shops or thrift shops, if you have access to any.

Also, because they're not good at breathing and wicking away moisture, the plastics are equally not great for really keeping you warm in cold weather, again, especially if you're prone to sweating. Speaking from personal experience here - they just make me warm and sweaty quickly, and then, being sweaty with my sweat trapped against my body, I quickly get cold again instead.

Wool is unbeatable in the cold. It's unfortunately pricey, but blends that are about 75-80% wool are a bit more affordable I think, and should still do the job wool is great at. (I actually have this experience with yarn and a RTW sweater and "pashmina" more than fabric, so, sorry, this is a bit of guesswork. The absolute best pashmina I have - lightweight yet amazingly warm - is one actually made of cashmere and silk, but that one was a gift. 😅)

Linen is unbeatable when it comes to being pleasant in summer. It tends to be rather stiff when new and slowly soften with wear and laundering. You can buy linen blends with viscose/rayon, which are (I think?) more afforable, soft and drapey right from the start, a bit less prone to wrinkling like there's no tomorrow, and still feel great.

I live in metric land. We don't use oz/sqyd, we use g/m2. And we don't shorten it to the weight unit only. For reference, I think quilting / craft cottons are somewhere in the 115-140 g/m2 range. Cotton twill in 160 g/m2 is the lighterweight version used for scrubs; for a more hardwearing version definitely go above c. 240 g/m2. - I'm currently a bit confused by "4 oz denim". 160 g/m2 is 4,7 oz and I wouldn't really call that a denim; plain old 4 oz is c. 135 g/m2, which is in plain old quilting cotton range, and I'd seriously hesitate to call a cotton twill in this weight anything approaching "denim". Having tried the conversions from oz, I'm... honestly baffled as to why it remains in use like this because it's a much larger unit than grams, and therefore must be quite clunky for differentiating between weights. Especially at the lower end, in lighterweight fabrics, I feel like it's all the decimal points that get left off that make all the difference.

Also, the reason silk uses different units may have something to do with the fact different fibres behave differently at the same weight, so it's not always the weight itself that tells you what to expect. Some fibres are "heavier", others are "lighter". Silk is a particularly lightweight fibre, so fabrics with a certain "hand" will be lighter than they would be in, say, cotton.

From all of the above, my personal rule of thumb for online fabric shopping is: rely on e-shops that tell you as many of the technical details as possible (exact fibre content in percentages, weight, preferably also specific weave / fabric type), rather than ones that just wax poetical about the fabric's properties. (The usual suspect is the word "silky", heh. That hides a multitude of sins.) The former know what they're doing, the latter are just trying to sell you something and may not be telling the full truth.

How to choose fabrics for projects (a list of advice and comments)

-Use your project to judge what fabric you want to use!  For instance, if you are making a summer shirt you should use a lighter material that has a texture like sheeting rather than flannel or wool.  If your pattern plans for stuff cut on a bias (sideways across the fabric), take that into account when you choose the fabric! 

-A lot of formal from-store patterns will suggest appropriate fabric types for that pattern.  Consider their advice, but feel free to discard it if you find a fabric you like better that will still work.  (Just make sure that the fabric will work!  You don’t want to end up with the equivalent of a swimsuit made of flannel!)

-Thick (like fleece), heavy (like heavy denim or canvas), very stretchy (like t-shirt jersey), or slippery (like polyester) fabrics are harder to work with.  It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use them, but you might want to get a little experience before you tackle them. 

-Choose fabrics that you can wash, and wash them before you use them!  Hanging to dry in a steamy bathroom will help a lot with wrinkles if you don’t have an iron. 

-Poly-fleece aside, choose fabrics that do NOT have polyester or other synthetics in them, in many cases the polyester is being used as a filler.  For instance, if you are making a shirt, look for your chosen weave (flannel, medium weights, twill ect) as 100% cotton, linen or even hemp. 

Polyester (and acrylic) are awesome materials - they make wrinkles fall out better and make fabrics softer.  And if you have sensory issues, you might decide that you want the blend or something pure polyester!  BUT polyester blends will tend to wear out faster.

(What I am trying to say is: choose the content of your fabric with intention and care.)

-Most fabric thickness is measured in oz/square yard.  2.6 oz/sqyd is the thinnest non-fuzzy fabric considered safe to wear or use in stuff like drapes without adding a fire retardant (thinner fabric is a fire hazard).  Some fabric mixes are considered safe too, you can look up the standards pretty easily if you are worried.  (Just be aware if your life needs to include a light gauze nighty!)

-Heavier fabrics will last longer before the fabric starts to disintegrate.  For instance, a 4 oz denim will be lighter and more flexible, but wear through much faster than a 10 or 12 oz denim.  (10-12 oz is the typical weight for older jeans, 5 oz jersey is a heavy t-shirt, most cotton sheeting is about 4 oz, plush sweatshirt knits can be 14-20 oz.)

-Silk is weird, its measured in “momme” (mm).

-If you can, support locally owned fabric shops!  They tend to have a better quality of fabric and people more knowledgeable if you need to ask questions. 

-Look for deals!  Thrift stores will often have both clothing and bedding you can pick apart and yardage from closed stores and people’s stashes.  Fabric stores will often have remnant piles and stuff (colors and patterns) that are discontinued.  By nature of my job I buy fabric by the bolt in plain white and then dye it - that is always also a possibility, too. 

Most importantly:

CHOOSE FABRIC YOU LIKE - Remember, you have to live with and like your completed project!