#i just have so many opinions

[arsenicflame]

Bonus round! Do you use a queue tag?

[notascammer]

alhaitham textposts pt. 1 (pt. 2)

[arcanegifs]

Here's more comparisons of Arcane Gifs before and after I color and sharpen em!

[deklo]

my interpretation of adoptive bee :’)

pls don’t repost!

[edenprime]

One of the strongest points of Mass Effect, if not the strongest, is just how well written the characters are. From Shepard, to the squad, to the side characters like Anderson and Bakara, to barely-there NPCs like Ereba and Charr the lovers, Etarn Tiro the enthusiastic turian merchant, Kargesh the krogan who wanted a fish, Lia'Vael, the quarian who gets falsely accused of theft, and the Salarian who wants to buy a memento to his asari lover to remember him by once he's dead.

I feel like so many of them are memorable, and they all serve a purpose to the overall world building. The krogan show that they are not the violent thugs the galaxy has made them out to be. The salarian shows the struggle born out of building relationships with people of a species with a life expectancy so beyond your own. Lia'Vael illustrates what Tali says about the quarians being treated like second class citizens. Those small little side quests have a meaning and a purpose, it doesnt feel like they are Just There, and they add more to the lore of them game to those who care about that stuff.

[yeonjune]

Yeonjun about the strain he felt while preparing for his debut solo project ✙ "GGUM" MAKING FILM

[bethanydelleman]

I'm watching a Chinese drama called Blossom right now and it's doing historical arranged marriage in such an interesting way and it's making me think more about my post about arranged marriage and particularly, what models of marriage has the female character seen growing up?

Because maybe part of why the Sad/Angry at arranged marriage princess/noble woman feels so hollow is because the mother is usually placidly sitting beside her husband pushing for marriage too. If your parents have a fine arranged marriage, what are you so worried about? It can come off more as a petulant kid than a real denunciation if we don't have indication that they really know what they're mad about or afraid of (Eloise Bridgerton...) Especially when they keep emphasizing how the girls are sheltered and ignorant, where did she manage to get this disillusioned?

This drama has so far shown three failed marriages, all unique. One marriage broke down because the husband was sexually assaulting female servants, another because after emotionally supporting her failure of a husband for 10 years, he took a second wife right after getting his dream job (that one felt so real), and the last woman accepted her marriage wouldn't have affection but was appalled when her husband cheated on her with her half-sister as it violated her sense of marital decency and respect.

What I really like the most is the characters mostly buy into, and all of them expect, marriage to be explicitly political. The whole mindset feels a lot more genuine to the time period. No one is Shocked Pikachu Face that they'll be asked to marry someone for family alliance reasons. And the anti-marriage female lead, she earned that opinion. She knows. She's haunted.

[roscoehamiltons]

having some insomniac thoughts about how the public perception of the george vs max fight is affected by their PR personas, how much people value authenticity (or the appearance of being authentic) now in celeb culture, and how max uses that to his advantage….

[tubbytarchia]

I swear to god 99% of people watching WL forgot who won SL. Put some respect on his name

[vela-pulsars]

not enough stonjourner art out there

[fumifooms]

Chilchuck analysis speedrun: As a hardworking half-foot who grew up poor and discriminated against and had his gullibility taken advantage of multiple times in his early adventuring days, Chilchuck thinks optimism is a dangerous flaw. He’s stressed and strict all the time because his job is noticing details like traps that could get everyone killed before anyone knows it, he takes the lives of everyone to be on his shoulders, and with the way he speaks about it that probably partly reflects how he felt about taking it upon himself to provide for his family too. His life’s always been pretty centered around work and has become even moreso now that his wife left and everyone is independent, and due to past events he’s very iffy with bonding with coworkers. He thinks feelings and job are a disaster mix. Like with his wife or with parties hiring him as sacrifice, being open or having good faith is vulnerability which can get you hurt, so he processes and shows all his stress as anger instead of worry. Doing strict dieting probably isn’t helping the irritability what with hunger, and on top of being a hunger suppressant alcohol might be the main stress reliever he has.

His grey hairs are so earned

[tapakah0]

Imagine A flying scene with grown up Alcor and Oscar (Remember Adeona? "Little" flying dog or Marmors) Imagine like something happens and Oscars abandons Adeona or Alcor snatches him from it

[egberts]

ALSO if prisoners could get educated then prisons could run themselves more reliably and function like communities which is conducive to a growing/healing/learning/absolving mindset

[jules-tells-a-story]

i think we as a society need to return to campy movies. i wanna see more "ghostbusters," more "repo! the genetic opera," more "rocky horror picture show." i wanna see more movies where you can see the effects, where it's all over the place and insane, where the music isn't something you'd find in an opera house, but you can tell that the people behind it put their whole chests, their blood, sweat, and tears into it. you don't need avatar level special effects to make a good project. you don't need marvel level complexity to make a good story. you don't need john williams making your soundtrack to have good music. we should be less afraid of movies being seen as "flawed" or "imperfect" because imo, that just makes them all the more fun and heartfelt.

[clfixationstation]

idk if this is a hot take but I don't think Armin is friendly. I think people find him generally off-putting. Like, people think he looks sweet, but also find him strange; for the topics that interest him, the way he didn't stray far from Eren (& Mikasa) socially, and his general demeanor.

I think that as Armin established himself more as he grew up, he developed better interpersonal skills that compliment his rhetorical prowess. I think he's the type of person who sees value in life and in minimizing harm. He offers kindness to his friends and understanding to all. But I don't see him as particularly "friendly"

[bonefall]

I was thinking about your tags, and while I understand the caution, it feels like it would still be a stretch to baseline equate common traits among the clans with eugenics. I know that humans can rly quickly go from everyone has biological differences = there are innate qualities that are "good" and "bad", and there's a quality of fascism in that, but when the clans are fairly isolationist, it seems like it'd be natural for there to be trends among its members.

this is also just me prompting for your thoughts on biology and politics surrounding that, since i appreciate your thoughts on fascism in warriors overall.

I think you're missing a piece in your takeaway that I'm more conscious of-- it's not that I'm wary of population genetics and natural trends; it's that the Clans have an obsession with "blood purity" paired with that.

When you introduce "subspecies" Clans to that, cats who are truly biologically suited to a particular environment, you are inevitably narratively connecting the rhetoric to this worldbuilding fact. Unless you're going to massively overhaul the theme and setting of Warrior Cats, to me it's like looking at xenophobic characters that say "mingling with out-groups is bad" and announcing, "I AM GOING TO GIVE THEM PHRENOLOGY BUT REAL."

Even canon is wise enough to not do this-- Graystripe shows in TPB that it's the oily diet that makes RiverClan's fur so water-resistant. WindClan's lanky legs never get more extreme than a general population trend; enough Clans have skinny warriors that you wouldn't "clock" mixed cats like Jayfeather and his siblings.

But in making those Clan differences MEGA extreme, suddenly, you have taken the irrational social bigotry and turned it into a potentially legitimate practical concern about adeptness in an environment. Not just against an individual, but against that individual's population.

As an example of what I mean, imagine if RiverClan had special, extreme adaptations to living in water. Let's say they're webbed-foot cats who can close their orifices like seals and their coat is twice as thick to keep the water out.

Outcrossing to another Clan means hybrid kittens display the opposite of hybrid vigor-- hybrid depression.

Without webbed feet, other cats are always slower swimmers than their counterparts

Hybrids have thinner fur, making them lose heat in cold water much faster, requiring them to eat more to stay healthy or get sick more often.

They may not have the same muscles to close their orifices, meaning they're more likely to damage their senses by swimming in dirty water.

You can reduce disadvantages with accessibility technology in a more advanced setting like BB, but... they are still born significantly disadvantaged, compared to a ""pure blood"" RiverClan cat.

Doing this also says something you might not have realized you've said at all; Your population is proof of evolutionary pressure. Highly specialized genetics like this (not just trends but HIGHLY specialized) implies there's been something preventing the genetics of other Clans from intermixing with RiverClan.

Which has two implications;

The hypothetical RiverClan cats achieved a positive goal by self-inflicting a selective breeding program onto themselves. (...eugenics. that's eugenics.)

The hypothetical RiverClan environment is so harsh and demanding that it will naturally, swiftly eliminate unfit phenotypes. (The river totally cancels out any secret outcrossing)

(as a side note, ppl tend to misunderstand evolution. Darwin wasn't totally right with "survival of the fittest," I prefer Bill Nye's description of "survival of the good enough." But that's a topic for another time)

Either way, I find those implications DEEPLY unfitting for BB. This is a project which has major themes of exploring bigotry, showcasing its irrationality and digging into how it's perpetuated and exploited in spite of that.

I think BB's themes have a better clarity of purpose if the physical differences between Clans are kept subtle. Never more extreme than what you'd see between ethnic groups-- with frequent reminders about how culture, environment, and politics shape behaviors more than genetics do.

Don't misunderstand me-- I'm not saying that every setting with physical differences between races/sapient species is doomed to this. I actually have good things to say about certain artworks that lean into it (Steven Universe, Beastars, Oren's Forge). I'm saying this specifically about WC and my work within that context.

If you're curious though, I actually have a loose set of "rules" in my head to try and keep my Clans' population differences within my own critiques! I've given a lot more thought to this than I've shared.

There are no "unique" Clan mutations, any trait could appear within any hypothetical kitten.

It's a matter of prevalence. ThunderClan is like 80% Sweetness Tolerant and the other clans are between like 15% - 60%. It's not a sign your mate cheated on you if your kitten likes honey.

But it is something that an accusation can be based on, if your mate is insecure or the Clan's politics are going sour. A "pedigree" RiverClan cat could still have a mane, and it can get used against them.

Some traits do help or hinder ability slightly (ex; thick tails making RiverClan cats better at steering in water), but typically not significantly. I Just Keep It Reasonable.

Most importantly, I just make an effort to have most traits be based on social behavior. Reflect enough and eventually you sorta train your brain to think differently. As a bonus, it helps with cultural worldbuilding.

Related: If you found this insightful, I also dove into fascism and TigerClan in a way that's relevant to this.