#how can the universe not love itself

[ripeteeth]

i might be high but it’s genuinely pretty cool that we’re patches of starstuff made sentient

[turtleblogatlast]

“Haven’t You Noticed (I’m a Star)” from Steven Universe works so ridiculously well for Leo

[puppppppppy]

i feel like im not making any sense but does anyone else feel like there are stories that let u run with them and ones that spell everything out for you

[unreal]

My Name Is Kanaya Maryam

You Fucked My Wife

PREPARE TO DIE

[barbieaiden]

rememberwhen he. remember. when. when.when. he

[thegreatyin]

to put a long story short: at the end of ffxiv's base game, literally Directly before the beginning of its first expansion (heavensward), there is a series of quests and story arcs that eventually snowball into an hour-long cutscene in which the entire thing comes to a head in the literal worst way possible. like, "the hero's plans all go horribly wrong and several major characters die onscreen, with others going missing (presumed dead), eventually culminating in the player character being framed for the murder of the leader of a nation-state and being Literally Forced To Flee The Country" wrong.

heavensward leads directly on from this plotline. you arrive at the major location of the expansion in the midst of seeking asylum whilst being a wanted criminal everywhere else in the world right now. it's like. A Whole Thing. the game makes such a big deal out of it all. the fandom does as well. and for good reason!! it's a really good moment!!!!!!

and then roughly 1/3rds of the way into heavensward you find out that literally none of it mattered. nobody important actually died, no changes were actually made to the status quo, and nothing comes of being literally kicked out of the country for (what is implied to be) several in-universe weeks, if not months. None Of It Mattered. None.

TLDR; the bloody banquet is a major, exciting, and very infamous twist that seems like it's going to segway into a MAJOR upheaval of the status quo and some really intriguing ramifications for the story as a whole... and then heavensward does away with literally all of that and practically writes the entire thing off as a waste of time.

you may be able to see why i'm so salty about it.

[cthulhum]

what is the single most beautiful moment in merlin and why is it 5x12 when hes in the crystal cave and the first thing he decides to do after rediscovering magic within himself is make a butterfly

[the-diabolic-acid]

everyday i think about the lost angst potential of rose finding out what she did to jack and i punch a wall

[metanarrates]

speaking of the concept of universal themes/emotions: there are emotions that a lot of the population will inevitably experience. things like loss, or joy, or loneliness ARE a really common component of being a person! and it can be comforting to know that your experiences are broadly shared. you are not alone, most likely, in both certain types of suffering and certain types of joy. it's nice to experience that connection to other human beings.

but the second you start calling things universal, you start to veer towards prescriptivism. statements such as "all art is about x" and "all humans experience x" frequently has the unspoken sentiment that "I will not contemplate the absence of x." there are people who do not experience love. there is art that is not made, in a general sense, to explore "the human condition," but rather to explore some other idea. and I suppose you could insist that no, it IS in fact about the human condition, or about love, or whatever, but to do so misses out on both what people have to say and what art has to say. you close yourself off from really vital, interesting perspectives of the world by doing that.

people have interesting things to say outside of your current worldview! and of course art does as well. don't do others the disservice of refusing to engage with it! you won't grow at all that way.

[bibmob]

For a whole year it genuinely felt like Rings of power was a fever dream and now there is a second season

I am stuck between a state of mortification and morbid glee

[tlgtw]

Space Marine 2 = 7/10. It's sounds are great but the weapons are underpowered and the AI companions are legitimately worthless. Playing on Hard Mode was fucking perfect but I could not defend anything while my two knucklehead NPCs literally stood around doing nothing and all the ranged enemies aimed solely at me. Normal mode is too easy :(

I swear on my eyeballs there's a legit cooldown on attacking for the companion AIs. I am positive this is deliberate to force players towards playing in multiplayer.

Satan made this game.

In conclusion, Space Marine 2's campaign is still not better than Titanfall 2's campaign. One of many, sad to see.

[shikiimisaki]

*walks in, removes eye protective wear and hangs up labcoat after a long day of Observing One Piece Ship Discourse On Twitter fieldwork* so while it may appear strange that people really readily say "luffy is canon aroace/doesnt care about any of that" whenever someone makes a truther post about luffy/hancock and then those same people may turn around and share a bunch of posts about gay ships involving luffy, it's actually more of a symptom of the fact that while most people posting said gay luffy ships are completely aware that their ships will not/could not/probably even should not actually be canon and are deep in the hypothetical, many dudebro types who ship luffy with hancock are completely convinced that their ship absolutely should or even will become canon, simply because he is a male protagonist and she is an extremely attractive woman who is interested in him, and it makes "no sense" for luffy to not go with her, either because they think that is how Stories Should Work (heteronormativity) or because they want Coolguy Chad Luffy and think having a hot woman obsessed with him like, adds to his coolness points in some vague objectifying way, which got more and more misogynistic sounding the longer i tried to find a way to word that sentence. this last interpretation does disservice to both of their characters and frankly, completely doesn't comply with any of the reasons hancock fell in love with him in canon in the first place. if you look for more then a minute at either of their characters you can tell that in canon it would never work, not even just because luffy is completely and entirely disinterested and in all likelihood that will never change, but because although I would say hancock's love is based on real traits of his she respects and was deeply moved by, she idolizes him and her fantasies about being with him involve shit he wouldn't actually do or say. she loves him because he's, literally, the only man she's ever met- and in the current day, often only person she knows across the board besides literally her sisters, who doesn't immediately treat her like a sexual object- and he only doesn't because of his fundamental and absolute disinterest in her, romantically or sexually. they exist in a paradox, and that paradox is used as a source of comic relief. what they have going on would be LESS interesting if he liked her in that way. if he was interested in her she would not like him in the first place. this got really off topic sorry. what im saying is this is why 1 person posting about how luffy and hancock are Totally Canon Endgame because who could turn down such a bad bitch!!!!!!! is a mischaracterization statement that prompts response or backlash in a way that 20 people posting zolu making out sloppy style in a corner completely aware that they are indulging in a mirror dimension and He Would Not Fucking Say That is not

[counselor-elijah]

…I don’t think he thought of either of us as people

[paigemathews]

Who did you think would win in a battle?

Wyatt Halliwell or Hope Mikaelson?

Definitely Wyatt Halliwell! Mostly because I haven't actually watched a single episode of any of the Vampire Diaries shows yet, so I have no idea who Hope is. (The main character in Legacies, I think?) (Don't worry, it's on my to watch list, my watch list is just really long atm.) I will say though that Wyatt is gonna be my answer for most situations. (Also thanks for the chance to do a little meta about Wyatt and his powers.)

From an objective standpoint in regards to powers, Wyatt wins against pretty much anything. I've said before and I'll say it again, I believe that Wyatt managed to break the Grand Design in the unchanged future with the exposure of magic, and I think that means he was able to kill some beings that he should not have traditionally been able to, aka the Cleaners and maybe even the Angel(s) of Destiny. (Which also loops into one of my now favorite headcanons that prophecies are made as a warning that a witch capable of breaking the Grand Design is coming.)

The catch, and how I'm able to write Wyatt in literally any conflict in my next gen fics, is that he has a critical weakness: he is terrified at the possibility of what he's capable of. (I have also mentioned that interpretation before, in connection with how Billie unintentionally makes it worse.) That kind of power is a lot for one person to handle, and Wyatt outclasses quite literally everyone around him by a large margin. I think that in a sense, his own fear serves as a kind of limiter on his power because he won't use them to the fullest extent. This is partially because he doesn't fully know what he's capable of because he doesn't experiment with his powers or push boundaries the same way that Chris does. While Wyatt has that kind of power, he lacks a greater amount of control and precision because he doesn't practice.

In a situation where Wyatt does go full-out, however, I think that he wins, no question. It's incredibly rare for him to do so, but one of his primary powers (projection) is a version of reality warping, y'know? That's not even getting into the fact that he has energy waves that can flat-out incinerate enemies without even trying. The challenge is getting him to a place where he doesn't hold back.

[natsmagi]

Tsumugi the cosmos the moon and stars at night, my love.

does tsumugi know he is more vast and wonderous than the galaxy itself............ yknow ive always been a big lover of the night sky

[ilynpilled]

another thing with spoiler talk is that it is often exclusive to just these #shocking big deaths for some reason. and i dont even think those things are the most “harmful” spoilers. the thing w asoiaf for example is how significant the utilization of pov structure is. like the whole series is built on key moments of recontextualization. we are deliberately given just a small chunk of information from the lens of a specific pov or side and the way a lot of the themes are conveyed is the challenging of that. like there is so much meaning in structuring so i am so glad people are way more focused on “googoo gaga this mc dies” kind of spoilers and a lot of the key directions the series chose to take and how remain relatively unspoiled because no one is really oversaturating those moments. like i love not getting certain key info revealed until it should be as it would completely recontextualize scenes and characters etc. i love having preconceived notions and those being challenged. because that was very much george’s intention and it is sometimes a key part of his characterization or framing or whatever