#gonna level with you:

[proxycrit]

Day 38– East Gerudo Chasm

“…You. I know you. You’re that zoran healer’s apprentice.”

(I known you. You healed my hands. I still wear ferns in my hair, because of you.)

Excerpt from Tauro’s Journal- “The Gerudo Kingdom, shattered under vicious attacks from the Malice infected, became a vassal state of the Hylian Kingdom around 20 BSE. Records have dissenting voices during that time— many argue that the Hylians took advantage of the chaos to enforce their policies upon the other races; more argued that vassaldom is a small price to pay for medical and monetary support, mandatory draft or taxation be damned. Either way, one thing remains clear: The Zonai were the first to fall to the Malice, but they were not the last. The Era of Alchemy is drawing to a close.

Interestingly enough, Sheikah records during this era did not explicitly mention Calamity Ganon until 100 SE. This implies Calamity Ganon the entity is not a direct correlation to the Malice infected.”

*BSE— Before Skyloft Era, SE— Skyloft Era

**Lifting of Skyloft 0 BSE, one of the few concrete dates available. See Ring Ruins and Tauro’s notes for more information.

(we’ve officially entered au territory! I mean, we already have with Familiar Familiar’s premise being a self indulgent totk au where zelda didn’t get whisked back in time, but now I’m going after the lore too. You’re welcome.)

((Wanna support me? Check out my patreon, with my throw away sketches and references! Remember to use web or android folks, apple charges 30 percent tax.))

[stemmmm]

the scene people keep screaming about from chapter 5 of theseus' guide

[starry-eyed-psychopomp]

You’d think that omegaverse aus would work really well for SVSSS, what with PIDW being a shitty internet porn series with 10,000 variations of sex pollen, but if you really try to rework the whole universe for abo you’ll find that it would actually crumble the very foundations of the series. This is due to the simple fact that the entire plot is spurred by Su Xiyan’s pregnancy, with her giving birth to Binghe alone while Tianlang-jun is imprisoned, but if the series was omegaverse there is no way in all hell that notorious dom sugar daddy masc Su Xiyan wouldn’t be the alpha to submissive and breedable omega Tianlang-jun. ANY other possibility is OOC on a world-breaking level. In this essay I will

[inkskinned]

the thing is there's like, a point of oversaturation for everything, and it's why so many things get dropped after a few minutes. and we act like millennials or gen z kids "have short attention spans" but... that's not quite it. it's more like - we did like it. you just ruined it.

capitalism sees product A having moderate success, and then everything has to come out with their "own version" of product A (which is often exactly the same). and they dump extreme amounts of money and environmental waste into each horrible simulacrum they trot out each season.

now it's not just tiktokkers making videos; it's that instagram and even fucking tumblr both think you want live feeds and video-first programming. and it helps them, because videos are easier to sneak native ads into. the books coming out all have to have 78 buzzwords in them for SEO, or otherwise they don't get published. they are making a live-action remake of moana. i haven't googled it, but there's probably another marvel or starwars something coming out, no matter when you're reading this post.

and we are like "hi, this clone of project A completely misses the point of the original. it is soulless and colorless and miserable." and the company nods and says "yes totally. here is a different clone, but special." and we look at clone 2 and we say "nope, this one is still flat and bad, y'all" and they're like "no, totally, we hear you," and then they make another clone but this time it's, like, a joyless prequel. and by the time they've successfully rolled out "clone 89", the market is incredibly oversaturated, and the consumer is blamed because the company isn't turning a profit.

and like - take even something digital like the tumblr "live streaming" function i just mentioned. that has to take up server space and some amount of carbon footprint; just so this brokenass blue hellsite can roll out a feature that literally none of its userbase actually wants. the thing that's the kicker here: even something that doesn't have a physical production plant still impacts the environment.

and it all just feels like it's rolling out of control because like, you watch companies pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a remake of a remake of something nobody wants anymore and you're like, not able to afford eggs anymore. and you tell the company that really what you want is a good story about survival and they say "okay so you mean a YA white protagonist has some kind of 'spicy' love triangle" and you're like - hey man i think you're misunderstanding the point of storytelling but they've already printed 76 versions of "city of blood and magic" and "queen of diamond rule" and spent literally millions of dollars on the movie "Candy Crush Killer: Coming to Eat You".

it's like being stuck in a room with a clown that keeps telling the same joke over and over but it's worse every time. and that would be fine but he keeps fucking charging you 6.99. and you keep being like "no, i know it made me laugh the first time, but that's because it was different and new" and the clown is just aggressively sitting there saying "well! plenty of people like my jokes! the reason you're bored of this is because maybe there's something wrong with you!"

[harmonized-disarray]

that she can come up with a line like that on the spot just blows my mind. what do you mean one of the most impactful sentences of the show was written the day of??? and informed by aubrey's portrayal of lady death??? and you're just casually going to drop this piece of information like it's not about to tear me to pieces???

[secretagentspydetectiveninja]

more v3 doodles (it's all just maki)

[m0cktails]

[very-uncorrect]

I click off immediately

[bunnieswithknives]

Gore, Violence and Blood under the cut

What a mess

[captain-flint]

Ed leaning in for a kiss

[sophsun1]

He and I are going to spend the rest of our lives together. And wherever your miserable life takes you.

Interview With The Vampire – 2.08: And That's The End Of It. There's Nothing Else

[funkbun]

when the boys are bizzy

individuals under cut

i thought about including inspekta as well but i only had the patience for One tall ass around here

[buggachat]

ok guys paris under siege is actually legitimately better than mrots (gameplay wise). like you can actually move the camera and the characters actually semi-respond to your button presses. this is so much more of a game than the other one

[shalpilot]

sparkle on

[bonefall]

Splashtail and Atheism

Hello. I am an Atheist and I call Splashstar an Atheist because he is based on widespread bigoted depictions of godless people like myself. There have now been several posts about this written as if they're trying to "correct a misconception," and I am tired of vagueposts completely missing the point of the criticism to get caught up on arguing semantics.

The misanthropic, god-hating "Atheist" character in Christian propaganda, which I feel Splashstar has some alarming similarities with, does not come from the writer's correctable "misconception" of irreligious labels. It is born from a hatred of nonbelievers.

Specifically, my point that Splashtail is a mashup of two popular anti-secular tropes common in religious media;

The assertion that there's no such thing as a "real" nonbeliever, and that Atheists are just "rebelling" against God because we're mad at him, want to do bad things without guilt, or have "lost our way."

The belief that morality itself stems from faith in a higher moral being, asserting that the irreligious are "evil" in contrast to the faithful.

Even passing familiarity with the arguments of Christian apologia seen in Chick Tracts, Pureflix films, PragerU videos, and so on, will have put these tropes in front of you. They are false and harmful, and they target Atheists.

For more on this, TVTropes has an entire article dedicated to the Hollywood Atheist and its sub-tropes. Note how many of these Curlfeather and Splashtail fall into, regardless of if you're arguing that they are "real atheists" or not.

Those that hate us do not care about semantic labels. To them, we are without God, A-Theistic, and they do not actually care what is at the core of your beliefs if it contradicts their narrative.

But, even worse, the "Splashtail Can't Be An Atheist" crowd isn't even totally correct on the semantics they're trying to have a pedant battle about.

Most atheistic organizations and online atheists define Atheism as "one who does not believe in God" and attempt to push a sliding scale of "agnosticism" on how hard of a "maybe" you're feeling about your lack of faith. In the sliding agnostic scale, Agnostic Atheists are a "probably no god" and Gnostic Atheists are a "definitely no god." Others describe that scale as "hard" and "soft" Atheism-- but there is NOT universal agreement on that definition.

There other definitions of an "Atheist," and even those who reject the "agnostic scale" completely (I am one of them). "Atheism" was historically the catch-all term for what we might now call "Irreligious," and more.

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy explores its many meanings, and proposes that what defines an Atheist is an active choice to distance oneself from faith; "Someone who rejects the premise of gods either based on lack of belief, or meaninglessness of the question." Matt Dillahunty, a prominent educator and activist, intentionally refers to himself as an Atheist when others (including religious people!) have tried to pressure him into using the label Agnostic, for reasons he covers in great depth. Historically, "atheist" simply meant anyone who denied the gods or acted impiously, evolving into use as a broad label for irreligious practices around the 1500s, until attempts to narrow it to "nonbelievers in deities" in the 1800s.

By EoP's expanded definition alone, Splashstar qualifies as an Atheist. The rejection does not have to come from a belief that Theism is false, but that the question is meaningless. He doesn't have to "believe" in StarClan any more than you have to "believe" in a total stranger. He rejects faith in it and lives without their influence.

But even more than that, "atheist" is a broad, stigmatized term with a history you can't erase. Hundreds of combinations of philosophies, spiritual beliefs, and logical positions have been called "Atheism."

"Atheist" can refer to Agnostics (those who aren't sure if there is a god or not), Antitheists (opposition to the belief in and/or worship of gods), Igtheists (those that feel that "god" is such a nebulous term that the question of belief is meaningless), Apatheists (people who just don't care), practitioners of Non-Deistic religions (such as Humanistic Judaism and some sects of Buddhism), and even heretics who spoke against religion like Diagoras of Melos (gay guy who chopped up a statue of hercules and used it to bake beans. king.)

In a fantasy universe where gods are provably, visibly real, the term "Atheist" is going to look a lot more like those historic and expansive uses.

Unless you want to argue that "atheism" by the narrow, popular definition of "believing in deities" can't exist in such a setting. So, arguing that Cloudtail stopped being an Atheist when he saw demons in OotS, in spite of this not affecting his spiritual practices. Or, dancing around using one uniting term, you could specifically say Curlfeather is a Misotheist, Splashstar is an Antitheist or Agnostic, Mothwing is Deist, etc.

You could have a discussion about how applicable these words even are in the setting. Or make up terms that satisfy yourself. You could do this forever. But I choose not to.

I think it's counterproductive to push people to learn a bunch of terms for hyperspecific branches of irreligious philosophy just to discuss clear anti-secular sentiment within the text of a book, actually. Or push people to abandon a useful word because fantasy isn't exactly the same as real life. Functionally, imo, all of those aforementioned cats are Atheists within this setting, living "without god" by rejecting belief-- and many of them invoke real world bigotry, with tropes much older than WC itself.

So the simple fact is; Calling Splashtail an "Evil Atheist" immediately communicates the narrative tropes I am criticizing.

Either by authorial accident or on purpose, Splashstar's lack of morality being tied to his rejection of StarClan invokes the demonized atheist trope, very much like the ones seen in PureFlix's God's Not Dead or Jack Chick's The Last Generation.

All the arbitrary wishing that the terms were more narrow and exclusive will not change the reality that those characters are intended by bigots as atheists. The terms of the discussion reflect that. Trying to tut-tut the fandom for calling a spade a spade is a smug way to phrase you completely missed the damn point.

[the-kipsabian]

saw a take so fucking rancid on twitter i almost deleted the entire app from my phone jesus fucking christ

first of all ao3 is an archive site. this is like going to the library and saying "oh i dont like this" on every piece of media you find that you dislike and thinking they should be stamped with some sort of a marker just cause you didnt like it

you can always click back and leave. fic writers owe you nothing to explain themselves and their creations. if they have mistagged or miscategorized fics, then i understand, however there are report tools for that instead of yelling at the artist tbh

im not saying free works arent necessarily above criticism. but this is just. fucking wild. its common courtesy to just enjoy stuff (or fucking leave if you dont, the back button is free) and if the artist specifically asks for critiques, then give one - constructive that is, shitting all over someones work is not proper criticism, mind you

i just find it fucking wild people are treating art and archive sites as social media these days like this and everything needs to be policed and ~catered to the algorithm~ like. no. ao3 doesnt have an algorithm. you should be able to fucking tell what you like and what you dont like and steer away from that kind of content and let people fucking be with their art. they dont owe you anything (except trigger warnings i'd argue, but i know some people disagree with that as well for some reason), and imagine how much more energy you'd have if you only engaged with things you liked and spent time looking at instead of going to places where you dont enjoy yourself. let alone spending time telling other people you dont enjoy what they enjoy. what a fucking life