#it's in how you carry yourself

[collateral-joy]

The Littlest Emmy Winner

[companion-showdown]

Which companion is the most normal person?

TOURNAMENT MASTERPOST

[somegrumpynerd]

How absolutely wild must it have been for Nightmare to have like, minimum-to-no contact with mortals for hundreds of years and then the first two he has any regular close interactions with are Killer and Dust.

Like he must have a book in his castle somewhere of all the observations he kept like he was studying a new species

[littencloud9]

bsd fandom has always mischaracterised kunikida to hell and back but the fact that i am seeing SO MUCH hate for his character right after his 'death' is insane

[doginprogress]

Ok. Let’s talk lure coursing safety.

A pretty awful accident occurred during the lure coursing at UKC Premier this past week. I wanna make it clear that I cannot and will not be passing any kind of judgement on what happened. I was not there, I do not know many details other than the owner themselves called it a freak accident.

And the truth of lure coursing is that even if/when things are done perfectly, this kind of accident is always a possibility. There is a certain amount of risk you must weigh and decide to take when you decide to let your dog lure course.

1. Mechanical Risks - like with this accident, there is always the possibility for injury when coming in close proximity to a thin, tensioned wire running at speeds upwards of 30+ mph. Line burns on paws and lower legs are not uncommon, and many dogs run muzzled to prevent them from cutting their mouths when trying to bite a moving line. Azula has gotten tangled and line burnt after the line, loosened by wet conditions, popped off a pulley mid run. I myself have scars from some pretty awful line burn after a freak accident while setting up the field.

To help mitigate this risk, the huntmaster should always have a knife or scissors on hand and should be closely watching the dogs running so they can cut the line and release tension at any sign of a tangle. The lure operator should be highly trained and also be keeping out for any sign of danger so they can stop the lure when needed. As a competitor, make sure you are aware of the line at all times. Not only where it is, but when it is and isn’t moving. I try to never move my dog over a moving line, and when I am moving over a line, I am either taking extra tall steps or stepping on it to make sure I don’t trip (but, DO NOT step on a moving line). Try not to grab a line unless absolutely necessary and never ever ever grab a moving line - you will cut through your hands.

2. Other Dogs - lure coursing is one of the few (maybe the only?) dog sports where multiple dogs are competing at the same time potentially hundreds of yards away from their humans. It’s a high arousal and highly competitive environment, and this can lead to conflict between dogs. Sometimes this can be mitigated with muzzles and sometimes the dog should simply not be participating in lure coursing. If it is your dog that is aggressive and putting others at risk, please do not run them in the Open or Specials stakes. Dogs can have just as much fun running in singles and no title is worth potentially endangering your dog and others by running a dangerous dog.

However sometimes the risk comes simply from dogs running together at high speeds. Dogs can unintentionally bump into or trip each other, I’ve seen dogs leap over another in the field, tumble into each other while slowing down, and run into each other when they’re paying too much attention to the lure and not enough to the other dogs on the field. Sometimes unintentional contact happens and it’s important to recognize that too. There’s really not much that can be done in those cases.

3. Field Conditions - heat, rain, snow, height of grass, dry ground, rocks, trees, and the course plan itself can all pose issues when running. The club running the event should be continuously assessing these and doing what they can to alleviate the effects, but there’s a lot that you have to judge for yourself and what you know about your own dog. Wrapping paws or soaking them in water can help minimize injury due to dry ground, soaking a dog in water can help keep them cool on hot days, and knowing how your dog may handle tight turns can help you evaluate whether you should enter based on the plan for the course.

Fields with numerous trees or other obstacles are dangerous for dogs who may be paying more attention to the lure than their surroundings. If you’ve never been to the field before I highly suggest talking to someone was has to get a feel for what to expect.

4. Honest to God Freak Accidents - sometimes shit happens. A dog steps into a hole no one noticed and breaks their leg. A group of deer pop onto the field and your dog takes off after them, disappearing for hours. A dog with no prior indications has a cardiac event mid run, and is gone before anyone can even process that they’ve stopped running.

Sometimes there is absolutely nothing that could have been done differently and things just happen. It unfortunately is part of life and something that can be so hard to accept. Occasionally, there is no rhyme or reason, no blame to lay. When you go to that coursing event and run your dog, you’re entrusting that a lot of the risk has been mitigated for you by those running the event. That’s why it’s so important to know who that is and what experience they have.

But beyond that, you are assuming some amount of gambling by participating in lure coursing. The sport itself has dangers that cannot be managed away. But so does agility, and flyball, and disc, and dock diving, and any other sport of any kind. This does not mean that any of these things should be discontinued, but that you should not take any of these lightly and consider the risks vs the rewards, both personal and for your dog. Lure coursing has unfortunately become fairly available to do on a whim in recent years when it is truly something you should be heavily educated about before choosing to participate.

[captainofthetidesbreath]

[blows a kiss out to sea] for the Mighty Nein pirates arc

[merry-andrews]

Johnny/Kenshi but there never was a Mortal Kombat, Johnny just met him at one of his travels to Japan and now they're married, on a honeymoon. Soft morning with Kenshi kissing top of his head and caressing his body when Johnny lifts his head to ask why Kenshi keeps him around only to be answered; "darling, I wanted to have you all for myself like a cute little pet from the first time we met."

[uncanny-tranny]

You lose the plot when discussing and fighting for minorities when you buy into the specific brand of (specifically christianity) "suffering is Divine, and the more you Suffer, the More Divine you are."

Suffering is suffering is suffering - when you choose to ignore a marginalized group's suffering because they are not suffering enough or are not "good victims," you have lost the plot.

[purgetrooperfox]

not to foxpost on the foxblog but I think we should all talk more about the cognitive dissonance that the GAR, and the Guard specifically, would have to deal with on an ongoing basis. they're brought up and had it drilled into them for a decade straight that the Republic is worth fighting and dying for, that it stands for justice and freedom and [insert patriotic buzzwords here]. they get deployed directly into a slaughter on Geonosis. they get assigned to Jedi who intentionally get them killed. they get assigned to the Guard and listen to Senators treat the war like an abstract, distant concept and the clones like equipment to be manufactured/replaced/disposed of. they're treated as subhuman by civilians. they're slaves in this system that was built up to be a shining star, a perfect example of democracy, the thing they're born to die for.

so what do you get. indoctrinated beliefs versus lived experience. sure, some of them turn (Slick) or desert (Cut), but most of them have to reconcile that conflict without walking away from the army altogether. Dogma is one end of the spectrum, going the route of "my indoctrinated beliefs must be true, so I'll selectively validate parts of my lived experience to align with them and seek out proof of them". Fives is, on Umbara at least, the opposite end, going the route of "my lived experience must be true, so I'll recontextualize my indoctrinated beliefs to match it". the Republic is still worth everything, but maybe we can't trust the Jedi, or the Kaminoans, or the Chancellor.

but the majority of them are going to fall closer to Dogma, otherwise the GAR would stop functioning or try to collectively rebel, right? it's easy to skirt around how deep brainwashing runs and how far people will go to resolve dissonance, but fmngmfng

so you take Fox in the context of Commander of the Guard, and you get "the Republic must still be worth it, so these rules and regs are in place for a reason, and even if they're not then they do work to protect us, and the Senate is doing its best with a bad situation, and the Chancellor wouldn't commit xyz atrocity because he is the Republic" and on and on and on to try to reconcile it all in his poor fucked up brain. how would he carry on with the slog of his job? how could he possibly have the space to wrestle with the contradiction? then the longer you lean into one justification, the deeper it sinks in and reinforces itself

anyway this has been needless over-analysis hour

[andromeda3116]

people actually went on about how game of thrones made it socially acceptable to be a fantasy nerd, as though the lord of the rings movies hadn't been released less than a decade earlier and left far greater cultural ripples and i am just

got may have made the adults feel better about liking fantasy, but lotr got into the kids' heads when they (we) were just young and impressionable enough to be absolutely transported and emotionally rewritten by don't you leave him, samwise gamgee and my brother, my captain, my king and and rohan will answer

lotr was rewriting entire generations' brain chemistry long before asoiaf and so obviously it's not fair to compare any post-lotr fantasy novel to it, and each book series was trying to do different things within their own spheres and so that also is not a fair comparison, but in terms of the cultural impact of the adaptations that came out within a decade of each other, saying that it was game of thrones that made fantasy mainstream is baffling

game of thrones could only run because the lord of the rings movies laid the path, and i will die on this hill

[hunxi-after-hours]

bai liu: if I met my younger self in a scenario, I simply would not kill him bai liu: instead I would lie, cheat, exploit, and emotionally manipulate my younger self into working for me bai liu: it's called profit maximization 👍

[sea-buns]

Forgive me if I'm a bit nervous about Gorgug this season. It's just that the last Zac Oyama pc was Colin Provolone, who was arguably one of his greatest D20 performances, if not the greatest.

Zac always does great with every pc he plays, but Colin was something else. He came out swinging with actions and words that were teeming with unspoken emotional baggage. The way Colin's presence affected the other pcs; there was this level of depth that I don't think I've seen in any of his other characters. It was understated and quiet in that signature "just a guy" way that he tends to be, while still captivating everyone instantly with just how raw it was.

Not to say we haven't seen emotional depth in Gorgug. It's just that, compared to the other Bad Kids, Gorgug's journey and progression as a character has been very... impersonal? Like, yes, he found his birth parents, and he found friends who appreciate him, and he faced his insecurities about his intelligence, and he navigated relationship troubles, and his trial through the claustrophobic bug-tunnels was a horrifically-uncanny parallel to how he's spent his entire life trying to make himself as small as possible.

But how much of that has actually changed him from the Gorgug we started with? I would agree that he's definitely happier with his life, given all the loving and supportive people that have been added to it when it used to be just him and his parents. And he's certainly grown into himself and become more self-assured in his abilities, even if he's still, and always will be, our anxious little guy. And there's nothing wrong with that. I've always liked how Gorgug was a representation of all the little things. The subtle acts and kindnesses that don't seem like much to most, but to some are everything.

We don't need another Bad Kid living in fear that their mouth could be shit-in at any moment. We've already got one-too-many.

All that being said, I just feel like Gorgug's personal story beats are much easier to sweep under the rug than everyone else's. He has the same soft and understated quality that Colin held, but they lack that extra oomph that pushed Colin over the edge from being just another guy in a series of dudes, to a character that the vast majority of us could not get out of our heads. He took someone who was anxious and softspoken, who ultimately never wanted to be violent— someone who is remarkably similar to Gorgug in many ways— and maintained that demeanor and core in Colin's character while still hitting us in the feels with character development at max velocity at every turn.

I think Zac gets better and better at this with every season that goes by. With each new character, there is always something that leaves me stunned in awe. And it's been, what, three? Four years since we last saw Gorgug?

I'm just,,, I'm cautiously optimistic but also going into a bit of a worry about what violence this man may inflict upon us

[arisveah]

terrible awful realization

[image transcript:

arisveah: and the surgery scene was so much more piercing seeing it from a different angle like omg now we have the idea that he was screaming the whole time omg.

best friend: RIGHT

arisveah: (referring to a previous comment about the exposure) "nerd" okay star wars. what am i supposed to do with the knowledge that charlie was screaming for half an hour what the fuck. what do i do with that? poor boy. if he ever escapes his voice is going to be absolutely shot. and plus saying all that (referring to the horror of promoting a future sex channel with your voice and not your authority) on stream- poor man might never say anything again (if he gets out) :(

End of transcript]

[gothicprep]

big fan of this because tumblr didn’t exist in 2006

[enigmaticpink]

I wonder how my great great great grandma who was born in 1907 and died before even my mom was born would feel to know that in 2024 there's a cat named after her. Like to know that her own great granddaughter who she only ever known as a little girl, would as a 65 year old woman, adopt a cat and think like...'she reminds me of my great grandmother who's been gone longer now than I ever knew her.'

[notedchampagne]

nona the ninth has helped me to romanticize the impermanent which is equally healing and horrific