#good god this is long

[ronanceautistic]

Nancy Wheeler 101, today we’re discussing how, throughout the entire show, she’s never lived for herself.

At the beginning all of her motivations are to do with Steve, putting her friendship with Barb to the side, her studies, her relationship with her family. After Barb goes missing everything she does revolves around her. She throws herself into danger, absolutely no regard for her own safety, for the sake of finding her. She puts what Jonathan did at the party aside because she knew they could help each other. She puts the slut-shaming in the back of her mind because it wasn’t important right now.

For the first part of Season 2, Nancy is definitely lost. She wants to live for Steve again, being almost inseparable with him, but there’s also so much of her heart and brain dedicated to Barb. But Barb is gone, and she has no idea how to process that grief. It tears her apart, causing the outburst at the Halloween party. After Steve breaks up with her, she doesn’t talk to Jonathan about the breakup, she only talks about Barb. And then spends the rest of the season on a mission to bring the Lab down, not for herself, but for Barb. Once again, throwing herself into danger by willingly getting kidnapped by them just to gain information.

Season 3, while she is very independent and self-assured, her motivations are still egged on by the prejudice she faced from her bosses. So much of what she did, she did out of spite and stubbornness. During the second half of the season, she repeatedly throws herself into danger to protect the kids, going so far as to pretty much sacrifice herself to them when she puts herself in front of the car when Billy is speeding towards them.

Season 4 gives me the vibes of someone who is persevering because there is nothing else they can do. She’s just lost Fred, and looks so lost and tired on that roadside. It’s clear that she just has no clue what to do with herself now. Note now that investigative instinct kicked in, asking the cop if he’d looked into Victor Creel. He quickly, but gently, shuts it down. Despite the fact that she’s been shut down and only dug her heels in further previously, she looks completely defeated from that one interaction.

But then, the gang arrive with news that it’s Upside Down related. And so she keeps going, because she needs to. But she loses, Max dies and Vecna lives, and add this with the vision of her family dead, I think it’s going to make for a very interesting Season 5 for her.

TLDR everything she’s done, has been motivated by other people. She’s never had any regard for her own safety, always put herself in dangerous situations for the sake of saving others, and never seemed to find actual happiness or peace. In Season 5 she’s got a lot on her plate, the prophetic visions from Vecna, feeling the responsibility of the world on her shoulders. She’s got a very big obligation to keep living, and I truly believe that once it’s all over, once they’re finally at peace, she’s going to suffer way more than she realises, because it’s going to feel like she has nothing left to live for.

[updownlately]

Also fascinating how England is exactly three more than the Netherlands and hasn't scored again. There's something very strange going on and England fans are blind to it because it's convenient for them

i’m contemplating on how to respond to this because either way i’m gonna catch fire.

im going to put where i stand here, and ill let y'all have your own opinions. this is being posted at the end of full time of both games and netherlands have won to go through to the olympics.

now:

yes it completely unfair that england and scotland were matched in the same group. that shouldn't have happened in the first place

do i think there was cheating? no. i don't. imo both teams tried, there was no clear indication of a team throwing of any sort and its why i don't think there was clear cheating.

players throwing however? maybe there were. maybe there weren't. that isn't something im going to speculate to be honest.

the ref was shit for this game and you can't change my mind. there was a ton of fouls and concerns that went uncalled/unaddressed. scotland most definitely deserved a pen at the start.

for those of you calling it rigged mid game- i'd argue that there's no way for either team to constantly know the score. scotland had a number of good chances towards the end and england wasn't playing their best. idk, calling it rigged seems like a stretch imo. but again, who am i to say.

jen was doing commentary for the scotland side and there were a handful of comments she made that had my head scratching, but again, with the final scores in, im not going to think too hard about it.

to sum it up. yes it was match fixing, but i don't think there was cheating, at least not explicitly. i am not privy to everything that goes on the back end.

at the end of the day i'm someone watching these games from a whole ass different continent.

and i am going to have rose coloured glasses on whether i realize it or not and even as i try my hardest not to be biased, it is always going to make me biased and i recognize that. it is the way it is.

AND at the end of the day, these are my opinions. this isn't fact, this isn't knowledge, it is merely an opinion. you guys are very much entitled to your own opinion and me to mine. some of us may be right, some won't.

i may very well be wrong and that is cool with me. i'd love for any data confirmed that im wrong to come out and we can discuss it.

in the mean time, i stand by the fact that the match was fixed, but it wasn't cheating in my opinion.

cool beans?

now ima go get ready for the canada vs australia game. i shall post pictures of that tn :)

-blu

[kochei0]

I turn to Ares.

Thanks to Tyler Miles Lockett who allowed me to draw inspiration from his ARES piece for page 2! Look at his etsy page it's SICK

⚔️ If you want to read some queer retelling of arturian legends have a look at my webtoon

[danimalsk8r2]

4k words of describing inner turmoil and scenery and emotions and thought processes bc i'll strangle myself before i write dialogue. 4k+ words and growing and there is exactly one 4-word sentence. That's all i got. That's all i need.

[egophiliac]

still ruminating over Lost In the Book With Spooky Skeletons Part 1, so here's a selection of some of my favorite little bits! (...some more loosely paraphrased than others) (I just feel like Idia has no room to criticize in general, okay)

anyway, I'm sure we're just going to have a fun time celebrating Halloween and nothing bad is going to happen whatsoever! :)

[walkerrenee]

sometimes i randomly remember how insane maggie stiefvater was for making ronan lynch—a man that can create reality—a man of god, when he himself is a god of a man. then to take this man and have him be not only in love with, but a literal soulmate of a man named adam. parrish. adam parrish. who, mind you, lives above ronan's very own place of worship. and is the namesake of the first of mankind that the bible says god made from the literal dust of the ground (adam parrish: comes from nothing, hair "dusty" in color) and appoints him to care for the garden of eden (adam parrish: sacrifices himself to ronan's sentient forest). then has adam viewing ronan as a god and ronan saying "maybe he dreamt (created)" adam???? like who just fucking writes that and goes about their life?

[pants-lint]

Just had a Thought and now I'm curious. What's you guy's strangest comfort media? It doesn't have to be strange as in like creepy/fucked up/whatever, it can just be smthn a lil odd.

[orcane-rivals-of-aether-real]

*Runs into your askbox full speed*

Ramble about something you like! We're all curious! 👀

A while ago I stumbled upon the rabbit hole of early game pokemon glitches. Pokemon red/blue/yellow are held together with sticks and glue (think AAA game today on release glitchy), and a few key glitches break it wide open.

The most famous of these glitches is the cinnabar island glitch, which occurs when you surf up and down its east coast. The devs forgor to program encounter data (the data that determines what pokemon you encounter on a specific tile) on these tiles, so the game uses the encounter data previously loaded. So you can go to Diglett Cave, encounter a pokemon there to load the encounter data, and then fly to Cinnabar Island and you will encounter Digletts on the east coast. But what happens when the game loads the encounter data for a place that has no encounters? It actually loads glitch data, from code that is meant for something else! This is responsible for a lot of glitches, such as what glitch items do. Anyway, there shouldn't be a way to encounter a Pokemon in a place that has no programmed encounter data, but there is one spot: the Old Man that gives you the tutorial. When he shows you how to catch a Pokemon, the game considers it a wild battle and loads the glitch data, in this case pulled from the player's name. So, after the tutorial, if you fly to Cinnabar Island and surf on the east coast, you can encounter very strange pokemon. For one thing, sometimes their level is above the level cap of 100, going all the way to 255! Secondly, encountering these pokemon will duplicate the sixth item in your bag, so you can have infinite master balls. With 255 of a quantity of item you can perform a glitch that lets you obtain glitch items, some of which are very useful for things like editing raw data or playing Pong, and some of which are very useful for fucking up the game beyond belief. Back to the Cinnabar Island glitch, its third application is the most famous: out of bounds Pokemon. Surfing up and down the east coast you can encounter oddities such as the L-shaped "MISSINGNO." or an even stranger "# 'M ^". (This is an approximation. Most glitch pokemon have glitch characters in their names, which I obviously can't type out here.) MISSINGNO is an L-shaped glitch block that has the cry of a Nidoran. It's pretty unremarkable in Red/Blue/Yellow. # 'M shares a Pokedex number with it, #00, so they have the same sprite, moveset and stats. # 'M has one weird property that its sibling does not however. When you battle and catch a # 'M, the game is like "lmao nope" and even though its sprite is gone you still have to battle it after you catch it, which I find hilarious. If you catch it again, the battle will actually end and you will have caught 2 Pokemon: the # 'M, and a Ditto. Nobody knows where the fuck the Ditto comes from and nobody wants to question it. After you catch one of these badass looking guys, you may want to battle with it. Is it stronger than Mewtwo? Does it obliterate everything? Well, reality is often disappointing, and MISSINGNO. is not as strong as it's portrayed in fan games and creepypastas. It has only one good stat, being Speed, and every other stat is awful. Its base Defense is actually 0! It has a terrible moveset too, with only four moves it can learn. # 'M fares the same. So is there a way to get a Pokemon stronger than any other? Well actually yes! Every Pokemon has an ID number corresponding to the order it was created. Rhydon is #001, and the cast of Pokemon have IDs going up to 191, with # 'M as #000 and MISSINGNO. padding out the holes that were once filled by Pokemon cut from the game. #192 to #255, however, house the real strange and dangerous Pokemon. Some of these have cries that infinitely loop, some switch the colors to grayscale or fill the screen with glitch tiles, some have movesets or names that corrupt your Pokemon and item data, and a couple outright crash the game. If you want a super strong Pokemon, PC 4S H has better base stats than the highest non glitch Pokemon throughout every game. If the game loads an opposing PC 4S H's sprite, it freezes, so you can also use it to troll your friends! You can obtain it by exploiting the system that sends Pokemon from Gen 2 to Gen 1, because encountering it in the wild will also freeze the game.

Oh also in pokemon yellow there's a way to beat the game in under a minute. Humans can do it (in fact I did once after 10 minutes of attempts) but I like it best as a TAS. Here's a video:

[kensatou]

this is porn. to me.

bonus: okay you guys get it

[televised-eyes]

the way crowley’s lil head bobble lines up perfectly with aziraphale touching his back, it’s as if the touch caused an involuntary shiver up crowley’s spine…

[hinamie]

i don't normally participate in these redraw challenges but it's megumi so i'll make an exception

[huang-er-jiejie]

i. i just realised something about the kiss.

the way when aziraphale puts both of his hands on crowley's back, you can see them kinda shift so aziraphale isn't leaning. he held onto crowley for stability, and leaned in. pushed closer to him. he leaned forward. anyone ever says he didn't want the kiss im going to hunt you down because HE HELD CLOSE!!! HE KISSED BACK!!!!

EDIT: also im like WELL aware he kissed back i was even when i first watched it like its not a big revelation, its just that SOME people☠️ on TIKTOK☠️ KEEP SAYING HE WAS DISGUSTED BY THE KISS???? like i swear some people are watching a different show entirely

[winkle-pickers]

Covenant

[ivybladewitch]

Realized I never posted this here!

It took two years, but I made the Annie's Cathedral Rose Window Afghan! First time I made a full blanket, really love it!

[vaguely-concerned]

I understand and agree with a lot of the frustrations about the shortcomings of Inquisition as a story. but sometimes when I hear people complain about the chosen one narrative in it I do want to just be like... you know it's a deconstruction of the concept more than anything, right. the inquisitor isn't actually chosen by anything except stumbling into the wrong (right?) room at the right (wrong?) time because they like, heard a noise or whatever. or if you think they are chosen, as many do in-universe, that's something you have to take on faith, the maker-or-whoever moves in mysterious ways indeed-style. the Inquisitor isn't actually a Destined Chosen One, they're a Just Some Guy in a fancy hat, self-delusions of grandeur to taste as you'd prefer.

a running thread that goes through all of the personal quests of the companions is the concept of a comforting lie vs. an uncomfortable truth, upholding old corrupt structures vs. disrupting them, and the role of faith in navigating that. (blackwall the warden vs. thom rainier the liar and murderer. hissrad vs. the iron bull, or is that the other way around? cassandra and the seekers -- do we tell the truth about what we find, even if it means dismantling the old order of the world? and so on.) and your inquisitor IS at the same time a comforting lie (a necessary one, in dark times? the game seems to ask) and an uncomfortable truth (we are the result of random fickle chance, no protective hand is held over the universe, it's on us to make a better world because the maker sure as hell won't lift a divine finger to help anyone, should he against all odds exist). faith wielded for political power... where's the point that it crosses the line into ugliness? is it before it even begins? what's the alternative? will anyone listen to the truth, if you tell it?

interesting how you also get a mix of companion agency in this -- you have characters like dorian who ALWAYS choose one side of the comforting lie vs. uncomfortable truth dichotomy. he will always make up his own mind to go back to tevinter and try to dismantle the corruption of the old system no matter what you say, or how you try to influence him. meanwhile iron bull is on the complete opposite side of the spectrum -- so psychologically trapped and mangled, caught in an impossible spiritual catch-22, that his sense of identity is left entirely to you and your mercy. you cannot change dorian in any way that matters; you can be his friend or not, support him or not, but he is whole no matter what. you are given incredible and potentially destructive-to-him power over bull's soul. it's really cool (and heartbreaking) to think about.

this is a game about how history will eat you even while you're still alive, and shape you into whatever image it pleases to serve it, and for all your incredible power right now you are powerless in the face of the gravitational force of time -- of more than time, of History. you won't recognize yourself in what History will make of you, because you belong to it now. you don't belong to yourself anymore and you never will again. the further you were from what it needs from you to begin with, the more you will find yourself distorted in its funhouse mirror. (why hello there inquisitor ameridan, same hat!)

and to me this is so much the core of what Dragon Age is about right from the Origins days -- how and by whom history gets written, the inherent unreliable narration of it all. I hope you like stories, Inquisitor. You are one now.

I do think it's probably still the weakest of the games narratively, and it's hampered by its structure and bloated systems. but I also find it disingenous to say that there's nothing deeper or actually interesting going on with it, thematically. if you're willing to engage with it there is Some Real Shit going on under the high fantasy-tinted surface.

[egophiliac]

crossing my fingers and wishing upon every star that chapter 10 finally brings us the tweel cards 🤞🤞