#i'm also open to alternatives!!

[buttdumplin]

I only know Mexican Spanish, so I can only speak for myself and those I grew up with but "mami" and "papi" are not the equivalent of mommy/daddy as used in sexual or intimate relations.

We use mami and papi with our kids. It's what our tíos and tías call us that affectionately. It's what the lady from the corner store calls us when she's sweet on us and can't quite remember our names. It's what our grandparents call us as they fix up a scraped knee. And they bring out papito/mamita when we're either in deep shit, or in need of comfort that can only come from someone with more knowledge, power, or experience than us. It's a diminutive term of endearment.

I'm not saying it's never used as mommy/daddy, but it's hardly ever a title. The context of it is so wildly different, because it's usually what we call someone we're responsible for.

"Mamas" tho? Mamas can fuck.

[queerfables]

My two cents on Aziraphale's "I forgive you" is that he was straightforwardly lashing out. He knows how little Crowley wants to be forgiven. He knows because Crowley just told him. Crowley rejects forgiveness so absolutely that he rejects Aziraphale right along with it. It's the whole fight in a microcosm: Aziraphale standing there offering forgiveness and Crowley saying, I don't want it.

So maybe the words are Aziraphale showing he finally understands Crowley. He knows now that "I forgive you" is the very worst thing he could say to Crowley. That's why he says it. That's how he means it.

[anheliotrope]

Let me explain what happened. I'm going to work through events one by one, ending with the state you see in the screenshot.

I am playing Ironman (basically no saving or loading except as needed to restore the game state after program shutdown).

I am playing on Genius difficulty (4/5, I didn't want to get my ass turned inside out by Superhuman difficulty)

I am besieging the enemy UFO.

I am 90% convinced the map is empty of aliens, save for the UFO.

I carelessly explore the map with the XCOM soldier seen at the bottom.

At 1 TU left, the XCOM soldier makes Line of Sight with an alien.

My reaction: Oh shit, oh fuck, uhhh.

1 TU is not enough for the XCOM soldier to scratch their fucking ass, let alone retreat or fire.

On the next turn that alien is going to turn around and without fail obliterate my soldier.

Nobody else has LOS on the alien and nobody, even if they spent their entire turn's worth of TUs could not possibly move into a position that can allow them to shoot the alien.

I select the XCOM that you see still selected in the screenshot -- Jungo Chiba.

I contort all of my brain muscles to try to find a way to save my beloved anti-xeno legionnaire.

Jungo Chiba has exactly enough moves to face up against the wall on a trajectory towards the alien.

I use ctrl+click to force Jungo to shoot in the direction of the wall in 3x Auto mode.

The first shot destroys a section of yellow-brownish brick wall.

The second shot destroys a section of wooden wall.

The third shot destroys a wooden door and the same shot hits the alien in the side, obliterating them immediately.

I pog so ungraciously and take this ugly ass screenshot.

(I move him one tile away from the hole he just shot for no reason.)

What a fucking legend.

Thank you for your service, Jungo Chiba.

[roscoehamiltons]

LHFW 2024 graphics: Austrian Grand Prix

[iamfuckingsorry]

"Do you know where we are going next?" I asked ART.

Y'know what, I think maybe I don't need any more Murderbot books. I think maybe ending things here is fucking perfect and as much as I love Wells's writing I'm genuinely not sure it can get better for me.

Like, so much of the books are about MB learning how to be a person, about becoming okay with being a complete individual with everything it entails. The first thing it does once it's actually allowed to decide on its own is it runs away from it all (admittedly to go on a mission to confirm some things about its past, because it genuinely just wants to be *good*). It shoves all its emotions away as much as it's able to. Then shit happens, and it makes its first friends, makes decisions based on these friendships, goes through a lot of emotionally intense situations...

And we get to this point here. MB having zero doubts about going with ART says a lot about its relationship with ART, but it also says a lot about its relationship with its humans - it knows that wherever it goes, when it comes back, the humans will still be there. Its humans actively acknowledge its struggles with being a now-free SecUnit and MB is willing to entertain the discussions to an extent and share information about its deeply personal experiences. Hell, System Collapse ends with MB admitting it might be somewhat broken, but that's okay as long as it can keep doing its job, and agreeing to basically do counselling - this is the guy what would rewatch its favourite TV show again and again in order to avoid acknowledging it even had Emotions a couple books back.

Reading this, I know that MB will be okay. It has hopes and goals and genuinely believes in itself and it has an amazing support system that its willing to lean on for the first time in its life. I'm convinced it'll go on to do great things with ART. And that's really the only thing I need to know.

[hephaestuscrew]

I've been thinking again about Minkowski and Hera during the time when Eiffel was stranded on Lovelace's shuttle - about how Hera had gotten so used to monitoring Eiffel's wellbeing, and how Minkowski felt responsible for his safety, and how neither of them cope well with not knowing things they feel they ought to.

Perhaps one day Hera notices Minkowski reading the nutrition information on the back of the ration packs (the same kind as the ones that were on that shuttle). And Hera knows what Minkowski's doing, because she's been running the same calculations herself. Calories in one ration pack multiplied by number of ration packs on the shuttle, divide that by minimum calories required per day, add something on for the number of days survivable with no food at all...

Hera's got access to plenty of information about what the human body can survive, but there's too many variables here. How damaged is the shuttle? What's the temperature like? What's Eiffel's body weight? And there's too many horrible questions that Hera and Minkowski don't want to think about, and are unable to stop thinking about. How much will to live does Eiffel have? How long can a person hold onto hope in a situation like that?

Perhaps they each separately decide on an answer to their calculations, if only so they can pretend they know that he's currently still alive. But their mental countdowns tick down. And so maybe there comes a day when Hera glitches much more than usual. And maybe not long afterwards there comes a day when Minkowski can't seem to focus on anything at all. And maybe they talk about it, or maybe they don't. But either way, they both know that the other is thinking over the same question. And they are both hoping - more than anything - that the answer they've arrived at is incorrect. They are both hoping for an answer that seems impossible.

[lord-squiggletits]

A tangent from the tags of my previous Pharma post (and I just thought about this so bear w/ me if it's hastily reasoned) is that the Autobots being generally sanctimonious is actually sort of a reason why I find a lot of IDW Optimus interpretations to miss the mark, specifically the accusations of calling him stuff like self-righteous, caring more about principles than people, etc. And I know that sounds really ironic, but out of every Autobot (and almost every character period), Optimus is one of the few people who has a very forgiving/humanistic perspective on life or at least has a political approach of "if we don't stop fucking fighting we're going to be at war forever and eventually just kill ourselves."

He very explicitly wanted a diplomatic end to the war and not a military victory/conquest. He extended multiple offers to Megatron personally to work together and end the war (Autocracy trilogy, which was pre/early war, and Chaos Theory, which was late/end war, so from this we can assume Optimus' stance was consistent the whole time). When ppl hated him so bad they rioted he removed himself from the planet rather than argue or fight to justify why his actions were the best he could do. Sandstorm starts murdering Decepticons and Optimus solves the murders and then throws Sandstorm in prison bc sparing one of his Autobots the consequences of his actions is less important to Optimus than keeping the peace and making sure anyone who threatens to ignite wartime hostilities is punished for it. There are multiple characters throughout the series that other people give up on as too far gone or too cowardly/evil/damaged to be worth helping where Optimus alone is the person who says "I think they can get better/they did bad things but they're still people" such as the Dynobots, Blurr, Prowl (despite how OP's patience with him hung by a thread by the end of it), Shockwave, and, yknow, fucking Megatron of all people.

And on top of that Optimus' internal thoughts most of the time revolve around feelings of guilt, responsibility, anger, hopelessness/barely hanging on to his ideals, and so on. Bro regularly has thoughts about how the entire Autobot-Decepticon war was his fault and is depressed to the point the thought of dying/martyring himself makes him feel relieved. So like. Idk guys I don't think those are the personality traits/actions of a self-righteous person who thinks he's correct about everything and everyone who opposes him or fails his moral standards is just evil or whatever.

[averlym]

character designs for podcast musical (musical podcast?) @perfecttimeseleven // notes on the designs below the cut

hello there! usually i put commentary in the tags but i had too much to write this time.. thank you for clicking. have this uncoloured version as tribute. for ease of presentation i have once again made pptx slides :)

links for context: hcs and edits by CC @litanyofthemartyrs // scheherazade, [cc's px11 fic, incredible] // visual research sheets (under the cut) by me // the official art by @elliotly, which you can probably find on his tumblr(but is in too many posts for me to bother linking). enjoy!

[essektheylyss]

It is the year 2031. The second season finale of the Bells Hells animated series, episode title, "Red Moon Rising," has just been released. I open a new project in Premiere Pro. I title the project "LudinusDaleth_AMV". I drag "WageWarsGetRichDieHandsome_TheMountainGoats.mp4" into the timeline,

[punk-dad-sharkz]

i hope every person who makes fun of food allergies has a warm pillow on both sides and has wet socks forever and ever. I hope they have a paper cut and then get lemon juice on it.

[icewindandboringhorror]

reminders of the passage of time moodeboard

[frau-wilhelm-klink]

I mean this in the most affectionate way possible, of course.

But hey, that's okay! Somebody has to keep the people in Geneva busy😂

[the-black-bulls]

I watched the BC movie with friends and I have a lot of thoughts about it. I loved the animations, the voice actors, the fights, the teamworks. It’s a must watch movie for every Black Clover fan.

However the movie also reminded me why I think Clover Kingdom is a shitty hellhole of a place with no hope for changing and that Julius is an incomptent Wizard King and the Black Bulls should’ve been vigilantes or anti-heroes or their own self-proclaimed squad untied to the system that is built to discriminate them.

I like this series but it’s full of hypocrisy and pro-authority agenda that were only ever truly highlighted by Zora before he also ended up indirectly serving it.

(TW: rant in tags).

[spottedenchants]

Thinking on the passive I actually think you're right and that post is wrong after some googling, Essek must have 10 while asleep. Which means high wisdom or playing fast and loose with feats and such to back calculate

I see what you mean! I personally don't think that either calculation, Essek having a mid WIS score vs. Essek having a high WIS score, is verifiably incorrect. I see both as plausible :0 This is largely because it comes down to a directional interpretation of how Matt ruled 'meets it, beats it' for this interaction. That 9/10 split is a doozy. Hear me out >:3

In one interpretation, we have passive vs. action. An example of this would be PC passive perception vs. the DC of background goings-on (moments where Matt, unprompted, goes "So-and-So, you notice..."). If Essek's resting passive perception meets Fearne's 9 sleight of hand, then he 'just' beat her roll, as we saw. With bare-bones level 20 elf proficiency things, that ends up indicating his WIS score could be as low as 14.

In another interpretation, we have action vs. passive. An example of this would be an attack roll vs. AC. If Fearne's 9 sleight of hand meets Essek's resting passive perception, then she would have succeeded in her shenanigans. She did not succeed, meaning in this interpretation Essek's resting passive perception would be 10 to 'just' beat her roll. With bare-bones level 20 elf proficiency things and rounding taken into account, that ends up indicating his WIS score could be as high as 21 (ignoring stat caps).

Either way, we have more episodes with Essek upcoming and thus more opportunities to get some insight (ha- because WIS) into his numerical stats :D

[ineffablelunatic]

Little Capvers ficlet:

Captain makes Havers a knitted scarf at some point because he notices that he's always cold during the winter. It's knobbly and missing stitches and obviously homemade, but Havers loves it so much that he almost never takes it off.

When he leaves for North Africa, he takes it with him in his kit bag, despite knowing that he won't need it in the blistering heat. He touches it for luck before every battle, and sometimes he even sleeps wearing it, hoping to catch a snatch of the scent of Button House.

Meanwhile, Captain is left alone back at the house. There are snatches of wool caught on the bannisters, odd scraps of Havers left scattered around the house. He keeps one tucked in his pocket, even years later when he becomes a ghost.

And then, decades later, Alison goes to a shop selling genuine antiques from the Second World War, and she strikes up a conversation with the owner. She mentions Lieutenant Havers, and the owner smiles and takes her behind the counter and shows her the old kit bag.

Inside is the scarf, battered and dirty and half-unravelled, barely more than a few shabby rows of stitches. The owner lets her have it for free, because after all, it's nothing much, and who else would buy a grubby old scarf?

The Captain is overcome with emotion when he sees it, and although he knows he can't touch it, he asks Alison to lay it on the pillow next to his, so that when he talks to it each night he can have a reminder of his Lieutenant.

He takes out the scrap of wool from his pocket and lets it rest on the scarf for a few seconds and smiles. This is closure.

[miralines]

Hi hello, what the heck is narratomancy pls and thx

 ohohoho I will gladly tell you

In short, narratomancy is the semi-canonical magic/logic/physical law the Mechs universe operates under. That law is basically “whatever is best for the story is what happens.” This is why Jonny is dead for about a minute in How the Aurora Was Won, dead long enough for Brian to have to babysit his corpse for Gender Rebels, and also barely flinches during Sleeping Beauty– all those stories require different things for narrative convenience. It is kind of silly from a Doyleist point of view, and very hand-wavey, but also extremely fun to play with as soon as you get over the initial ridiculousness.

The strongest canonical basis for this is this post from Jonny on the official mechs tumblr, which says that their regeneration “tends to follow a rough logic of whatever works best for the story” (which is quickly refuted by Nastya), and to my knowledge the most comprehensive source on the theory from the fan side is this meta from @gunpowderdtim. There’s also a piece of HNOC fiction on Kofi Young’s blog that brings up the concept of narrative Echoes, which ties into all this as well. I believe the term “narratomancy” was coined by @lucky-sevens (who is no longer active, but whose meta is well worth reading) to mean “story magic.”

Ultimately, like most elements of canon, it is a very loose pattern occasionally alluded to, which the fandom then took and ran with, and something that probably varies based on which member of the band you ask. It’s also an extremely useful term and tool to use when analyzing the sheer chaos that is mechs canon.