#important stuffs!

[magnus-rhymes-with-swagness]

hey reminder that connecting humanity is extremely low on esims rn and desperately needs esim donations and also that there are a lot of cool things you can get in exchange for a donation

[wanologic]

reminder to take care of your loser human body

[troythecatfish]

[lesgay-loser]

"wdym you're a man, you were born a girl and youll always be one" = general transphobia directed at a trans guy

"why would you want to be a man, all men are horrible" "clearly you only want to be a man so you arent oppressed anymore" "gender traitor" = transandrophobia

[artsekey]

Thinking about the time I lost a game of Overwatch and I was so mad about it that I genuinely considered getting into shit with the other team in chat and then realized that it was a colossal waste of my living breathing Human Time and uninstalled Overwatch instead because it was only making me angry.

And then thought about the OTHER time when I was on TikTok and realized I was Not Enjoying Myself and was, in fact, seeing so many sad videos and fake influencer ads that I felt Truly Despondent and then just…Deleted it.

Imo I want my social media /general media experience to be a pleasant break from real world and I get to decide what I get to cull to make that a reality for myself. I highly reccomended it! Life has improved considerably!

[ambrosiagourmet]

I think one of the biggest tragedies of Laios & Falin and their relationship is how much his actions impact her life. But like. Specifically how much they WOULDN’T impact her life as much if they weren’t both stuck in such a shitty abusive situation.

This part of the Falin-tries-makeup daydream hour comic is what got me thinking about it again because truly it just... it seems like such a like an offhand comment that I'm sure Laios didn't mean to be cruel or anything. That's just like. A little kid not thinking about what they are saying. ESPECIALLY when the kid in question is Laios.

But man they depended on each other SO much as kids. Too much. It really feels like they didn't have any other source of positive reinforcement, or anyone else to share themselves with. So of course an offhand comment like that has a huge impact on Falin.

Or this little bit from one of the flashbacks:

This tears me apart. Do you think it tears him apart to think about? I think it does. I think Laios holds every small failure to care for Falin against himself.

And then there's the Bigger stuff. The way that him coping with his own trauma ended up impacting her.

Like his interest in monsters. Like him going to find a ghost, and accidentally revealing Falin's magic to the whole village in the process.

Like him needing to leave. And leaving her behind.

He shaped her life so much, and he carries so much guilt for it. And again, there should have been other people there to help. The same things that made Laios need to leave home are the things that made his leaving so hard on Falin. She ate alone after that. She shouldn't have had to eat alone just because Laios wasn't there.

She was 9 when he left for school, and he was 11.

Nine. And Laios feels like he failed her because he didn't stand by her through this better. As an eleven year old.

Both of these kids deserved so much better from the world.

[valeriapryanikova]

This season, on Hermitcraft...

(speedpaint)

[aethersea]

another thing fantasy writers should keep track of is how much of their worldbuilding is aesthetic-based. it's not unlike the sci-fi hardness scale, which measures how closely a story holds to known, real principles of science. The Martian is extremely hard sci-fi, with nearly every detail being grounded in realistic fact as we know it; Star Trek is extremely soft sci-fi, with a vaguely plausible "space travel and no resource scarcity" premise used as a foundation for the wildest ideas the writers' room could come up with. and much as Star Trek fuckin rules, there's nothing wrong with aesthetic-based fantasy worldbuilding!

(sidenote we're not calling this 'soft fantasy' bc there's already a hard/soft divide in fantasy: hard magic follows consistent rules, like "earthbenders can always and only bend earth", and soft magic follows vague rules that often just ~feel right~, like the Force. this frankly kinda maps, but I'm not talking about just the magic, I'm talking about the worldbuilding as a whole.

actually for the purposes of this post we're calling it grounded vs airy fantasy, bc that's succinct and sounds cool.)

a great example of grounded fantasy is Dungeon Meshi: the dungeon ecosystem is meticulously thought out, the plot is driven by the very realistic need to eat well while adventuring, the story touches on both social and psychological effects of the whole 'no one dies forever down here' situation, the list goes on. the worldbuilding wants to be engaged with on a mechanical level and it rewards that engagement.

deliberately airy fantasy is less common, because in a funny way it's much harder to do. people tend to like explanations. it takes skill to pull off "the world is this way because I said so." Narnia manages: these kids fall into a magic world through the back of a wardrobe, befriend talking beavers who drink tea, get weapons from Santa Claus, dance with Bacchus and his maenads, and sail to the edge of the world, without ever breaking suspension of disbelief. it works because every new thing that happens fits the vibes. it's all just vibes! engaging with the worldbuilding on a mechanical level wouldn't just be futile, it'd be missing the point entirely.

the reason I started off calling this aesthetic-based is that an airy story will usually lean hard on an existing aesthetic, ideally one that's widely known by the target audience. Lewis was drawing on fables, fairy tales, myths, children's stories, and the vague idea of ~medieval europe~ that is to this day our most generic fantasy setting. when a prince falls in love with a fallen star, when there are giants who welcome lost children warmly and fatten them up for the feast, it all fits because these are things we'd expect to find in this story. none of this jars against what we've already seen.

and the point of it is to be wondrous and whimsical, to set the tone for the story Lewis wants to tell. and it does a great job! the airy worldbuilding serves the purposes of the story, and it's no less elegant than Ryōko Kui's elaborately grounded dungeon. neither kind of worldbuilding is better than the other.

however.

you do have to know which one you're doing.

the whole reason I'm writing this is that I saw yet another long, entertaining post dragging GRRM for absolute filth. asoiaf is a fun one because on some axes it's pretty grounded (political fuck-around-and-find-out, rumors spread farther than fact, fastest way to lose a war is to let your people starve, etc), but on others it's entirely airy (some people have magic Just Cause, the various peoples are each based on an aesthetic/stereotype/cliché with no real thought to how they influence each other as neighbors, the super-long seasons have no effect on ecology, etc).

and again! none of this is actually bad! (well ok some of those stereotypes are quite bigoted. but other than that this isn't bad.) there's nothing wrong with the season thing being there to highlight how the nobles are focused on short-sighted wars for power instead of storing up resources for the extremely dangerous and inevitable winter, that's a nice allegory, and the looming threat of many harsh years set the narrative tone. and you can always mix and match airy and grounded worldbuilding – everyone does it, frankly it's a necessity, because sooner or later the answer to every worldbuilding question is "because the author wanted it to be that way." the only completely grounded writing is nonfiction.

the problem is when you pretend that your entirely airy worldbuilding is actually super duper grounded. like, for instance, claiming that your vibes-based depiction of Medieval Europe (Gritty Edition) is completely historical, and then never even showing anyone spinning. or sniffing dismissively at Tolkien for not detailing Aragorn's tax policy, and then never addressing how a pre-industrial grain-based agricultural society is going years without harvesting any crops. (stored grain goes bad! you can't even mouse-proof your silos, how are you going to deal with mold?) and the list goes on.

the man went up on national television and invited us to engage with his worldbuilding mechanically, and then if you actually do that, it shatters like spun sugar under the pressure. doesn't he realize that's not the part of the story that's load-bearing! he should've directed our focus to the political machinations and extensive trope deconstruction, not the handwavey bit.

point is, as a fantasy writer there will always be some amount of your worldbuilding that boils down to 'because I said so,' and there's nothing wrong with that. nor is there anything wrong with making that your whole thing – airy worldbuilding can be beautiful and inspiring. but you have to be aware of what you're doing, because if you ask your readers to engage with the worldbuilding in gritty mechanical detail, you had better have some actual mechanics to show them.

[captaincalamity]

the thing that pisses me off about the minecraft movie is how boring it is (or will be). people have consistently proven that complex stories and ideas can be conveyed through minecraft, with it not just acting as a backdrop- instead we get jumanji: block edition and it’s so annoying. minecraft is a beautiful game that has brought so many people together, that influenced countless childhoods, and this is what we get? i’m pretty sure it’s going to be the same plot as fucking angry birds.

this movie is taking all the momentum that countless creatives have provided to minecraft for 15 years and acknowledging NONE of it. you can have your opinions of mcyters but at least they have the guts to tell a story.

fuck, maybe my expectations were too high- but it’s hard to not expect more when we consistently got more from way weirder sources. things like stampys lovely world, the fallen kingdom saga, dantdms lab, hermitcraft, the dsmp and qsmp, genuinely every minecraft let’s play has SOME form of story- it’s just disappointing to see mojang fail to create a better story when they’ve had so many examples.

the world has MUCH bigger problems right now, but it’s still upsetting- i was born right in time to grow up with minecraft. and while im not surprised, i am disappointed.

[caseywond3r]

hey guys so apparently this is a thing a lot of people don't realise but like. if you have had writer's block/ art block for like. six months. a year. two years. that's maybe not a block. that's maybe depression. and you should maybe look into treating the source of the problem instead of just beating yourself up for not being able to write/draw. be kind to yourself and know that your struggle to create isn't based in laziness or a lack of skill or talent.

[scre6m]

"I cannot tell you the complete, fundamental shift that I have felt in the year since having surgery. I knew that I wanted top surgery for a decade; it's the longest I've ever thought about doing anything. The place where I went, I had that clinic's website open on my laptop for five years. It was this impossible mountain: I want that, but I'm never gonna get it. No one's gonna let me, blah, blah, blah. To have that be in the past now... I stand differently, I walk differently, I carry myself differently. It feels different in my body than it ever has. I have just never been happier. I've never been more centered. I've never felt more stable and present and alive. It's the best thing I've ever done for myself. It’s taught me a lot. The recovery process taught me about rest, accepting help, and caring for my body as something connected to me rather than separate from me, that I’m in opposition to: This is mine and I want to take care of it. I feel good in it and good about it. Part of cis people's fear around gender-affirming surgery is the fear of surgery at all — 'Oh, my God, but that's painful and scary!' My reaction to that is, 'No, no, you misunderstood. It was painful before. Your worry has kicked in at the wrong time. The right time to be concerned was about the pain I was in before this. I'm great now.' Everybody else's concern for me has been on a delay. There's no need to be concerned anymore. That's so freeing."

@lgbtqcreators creator meme: [7/8] lgbtq+ celebs — LIV HEWSON

[homosandhomies]

the lack of misogyny in heartstopper is so fucking refreshing. all of the girls in the show just LOVE each other. no jealousy. no cattiness. no competitiveness. elle, tara, darcy, imogen, and sahar are all just vibing together. in a world where literally every single tv show has women being pitted against each other, it makes me so happy to see full love, solidarity, and support amongst these leading ladies.

[jazzies-stuff]

TWST JP SPOILERS

Ramshackle dorm members' first meeting, in honour of Fellow Honest and Gidel getting cards (!!!)

Bonus:

Bonus bonus - Rollo being a proper Student Council President:

[troythecatfish]

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[mourn-and-watch]

just want to remind y'all of some kirkwall-related details that are not at all relevant for the possible events of datv:

meredith stannard is alive and kicking and is also planning a war against tevinter

red templars are in control of the gallows; it's hard to tell what's going on in the city itself, but with varric absent it might be left with no viscount again

there's an elven graveyard on sundermount where ancient elves entered uthenera; it is also possibly dedicated/related to mythal

there was also a demon contained in an idol on top of sundermount who supposedly possessed a great knowledge about arlathan and eluvians

the veil in kirkwall has always been remarkably thin and tevinter magisters were weakening it on purpose during their reign; the whole city was built as an enormous blood magic ritual site

if the veilguard squad is going to travel through the eluvians there's still one in kirkwall. the one that has been plot-relevant since dao

[shepscapades]

[dbhc flavored] Hermit a Day May: Day 14 — Doc!

Featuring both a current-day s10 doc and a verrry early s8 post-deviant doc! :]