#it's just good writing

[opbackgrounds]

Oda famously came up with the idea of the Supernovas on the spot after one of his editors said that Sabaody wasn't interesting enough, and it's incredible how easily he justifies their existence on the archipelago. It's established that Luffy doesn't pay attention to the news so he's not going to know about all these potential rivals, and the various routes of the Grand Line were mentioned back on Reverse Mountain when the crew got the log pose. Oda really has made up a world that gives him the freedom to do whatever he wants whenever he wants to, and that flexibility has served the series well over the course of its run.

[nandorisms]

The more and more I play as the Dark Urge, the more and more, I'm convinced that they're just Stitch from Lilo and Stitch

Neither were born but created:

Dark Urge: Created by Bhaal with the sole purpose of destruction and murder.

Stitch: Created by Dr. Jumba Jookiba as Experiment 626, designed to destroy everything it touches.

2. Struggle with Nature:

Dark Urge: Constantly battling their inherent urge for violence and chaos.

Stitch: Struggles with his destructive programming and seeks to find a new purpose.

3. Lack of Family:

Dark Urge: (Murder cult family doesn't count) No true family; relationships are often defined by manipulation or violence.

Stitch: Initially has no family, seen as a monster and an outcast.

4. Quest for Identity:

Dark Urge: Searching for who they are beyond their dark impulses.

Stitch: Looks for a sense of belonging and a place in the world.

Depending if you play resist or evil Dark Urge that rejects Bhaal...

5. Found Family

Dark Urge: If the player chooses to resist the dark urges, they can form deep, meaningful relationships with companions who become a found family, offering support, understanding, and a new sense of belonging.

Stitch: Finds a loving family with Lilo and Nani, Pleakley and Dr. Jumba Jookiba, who accept him despite his origins and help him transform into a caring, protective member of their family.

[swan2swan]

Uggggh, I love this finale plotline with the kids and Wu.

Because we, as the audience, can tell that the kids are being a little silly: you can talk to Wu. Wu can fix the problems. You're not endangering people so much as risking a leap forward in bioweapon technology, which isn't really the kids' concern and would be a little too altruistic.

But the kids don't know that.

The last few adults they've encountered in the past SIX MONTHS have all been cowardly scientists who abandoned them or deceptive hunters who left them to die (and Hap, but Brooklynn and Kenji trusted him, and it should be noted that BROOKLYNN ISN'T THERE AND KENJI IS ON TEAM "NOT OUR PROBLEM"). The kids are...kind of feral at this point.

[teagrammy]

People don't appreciate the fucked-upness of the Targaryens as like, a story theme enough. Like it's either "Ew gross incest why did George write this?" or "Who cares it's normalized for them what's the matter with shipping it?" Which ship what you want obviously, I am not one to judge. But like, the theme of a family being so wrapped up in its own mythology and a mirror for the nobility is so interesting.

Like all the nobility in Westeros have this notion of "keeping bloodlines pure" and pretty much every house we know in the story has some incest somewhere in their tree, and even when there isn't they always marry someone else of noble blood. They are obsessed with keeping power in the hands of the "right" people and families. The Targaryens have basically just that taken to the extreme. That's not even to mention the blurred lines between family and politics and marriage that Targ incest brings, which is again, an exaggerated form of the nobles' tendency to use their own spouses and children for gain regardless of cost. Family as a political tool blurred with the emotional. Except with the Targaryens it's a "Oh you're close with your sister? A completely normal bond? Yeah you're gonna marry her someday :)" It's impossible for them to have these normal bond because presenting that façade of power is what is considered more important, and their fall comes from buying into that illusion - an illusion of their own making might I add. It's awful, but it's just so damn fascinating to me and I think that theme goes over the heads of a lot of people.

[frankierotwinkdeath]

Y’all want Taylor Swift to be gay so bad but you won’t even write femslash about her

[lo-fag]

idk man. i just think itd be really cool if sign language classes were mandatory throughout primary school. yeah because it would make communication with deaf kids and autistic/nonverbal kids much easier. and those kids would be accessible to the others so they could make friends and have healthy relationships. yeah. and kids would eat that shit up man. like their own little secret language? they love that.

[prolibytherium]

One of my all time biggest pet peeves with historical(ish) fantasy is when the writer constructs a religion with a clear bias that it's stupid and false and therefore only the Stupid People and/or commoners believe in it and all the smart/elite main characters are like, quasi-atheists or otherwise just routinely flout established religious conventions of orthodoxy and/or orthopraxy because they're Too Smart for it or etc.

It's usually an extension of assumptions that people in the past were just less intelligent than in the contemporary, just being like "I know that the sun is a star millions of miles away that the earth orbits, but this ancient religion describes it as a chariot flying through the sky" and not really bothering to learn the context and just (consciously or subconsciously) settling on 'that's a crazy thing to think and was probably believed in because they were Stupid'.

And that whole attitude pisses me off so much. People were as 'smart' 10,000 years ago as they are today. These beliefs aren't just desperate, random flailing to explain phenomena that could not directly be accounted for either, it's not like people just looked at the sun and went "Uhhh I don't know what the fuck that thing is, actually. I guess it might be a chariot or a boat or something?? Yeah let's go with that." and based entire religious practices on this. Every well-established belief system exists within broader contexts of cultural values/subjective perceptions of reality/knowledge systems/etc, and exist as part of a historical continuum of religious practices that came before. Even when not Materially Correct, they have context and internal logic, they're not always dead literal with zero levels of allegory, and they're never a result of stupidity.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

[fabrickroll]

Is there anything better than a cabal of villains? Like, just a dastardly group of individuals plotting from the shadows, each with their own particular skillset and all ready to backstab each other at a moment's notice.

[elodieunderglass]

changes and trends in horror-genre films are linked to the anxieties of the culture in its time and place. Vampires are the manifestation of grappling with sexuality; aliens, of foreign influence. Horror from the Cold War is about apathy and annihilation; classic Japanese horror is characterised by “nature’s revenge”; psychological horror plays with anxieties that absorbed its audience, like pregnancy/abortion, mental illness, femininity. Some horror presses on the bruise of being trapped in a situation with upsetting tasks to complete, especially ones that compromise you as a person - reflecting the horrors and anxieties of capitalism etc etc etc. Cosmic horror is slightly out of fashion because our culture is more comfortable with, even wistful for, “the unknown.” Monster horror now has to be aware of itself, as a contingent of people now live in the freedom and comfort of saying “I would willingly, gladly, even preferentially fuck that monster.” But I don’t know much about films or genres: that ground has been covered by cleverer people.

I don’t actually like horror or movies. What interests me at the moment is how horror of the 2020s has an element of perception and paying attention.

Multiple movies in one year discussed monsters that killed you if you perceived them. There are monsters you can’t look at; monsters that kill you instantly if you get their attention. Monsters where you have to be silent, look down, hold still: pray that they pass over you. M Zombies have changed from a hand-waved virus that covers extras in splashy gore, to insidious spores. A disaster film is called Don’t Look Up, a horror film is called Nope. Even trashy nun horror sets up strange premises of keeping your eyes fixed on something as the devil GETS you.

No idea if this is anything. (I haven’t seen any of these things because, unfortunately, I hate them.) Someone who understands better than me could say something clever here, and I hope they do.

But the thing I’m thinking about is what this will look like to the future, as the Victorian sex vampires and Cold War anxieties look to us. I think they’ll have a little sympathy, but they probably won’t. You poor little prey animals, the kids will say, you were awfully afraid of facing up to things, weren’t you?

[opbackgrounds]

Oda does a really good job keeping track which of his characters know what information. I don't think anyone would have batted an eye if Nami didn't say anything here, but she wasn't around when Brook told the rest of the crew about salt so she has no idea about this weakness

[octarineblues]

supporting communities & people impacted by the Southport attack and the far-right riots in the UK

here is a list of community fundraisers I found, starting with those aiming to support the Southport community after the appalling attack at a children dance party, to the fundraisers helping those affected by the subsequent racist and Islamophobic far-right/nazi riots

Edited on 5 August to include Middlesbrough fundraisers. Edited on 6 August to correct the link on the Books for Spellow Lane fundraiser, to adjust the name change for the Belfast fundraiser, and to adjust the wording in the second last paragraph.

Southport:

Southport Strong Together Appeal - organised by the community foundation for Merseyside, for those affected by the Southport knife attack

United for Southport families - the funds will be distributed among the nine families of the children who were at the party

Swifties for Southport - a fundraiser for the Alder Hey Children's charity, which supports the victims and the affected families, as well as first responders and clinicians. Extra funds will also support the wider Southport community

Fundraiser for the Southport Mosque - a fundraiser to aid rebuilding or possibly re-locating the Southport Mosque after the damages it suffered during the riots

Rebuilding Windsor Mini Mart - fundraiser to rebuild the locally-owned grocery store that was targeted during the attacks, broken into, and looted

Liverpool:

Fundraiser for the Spellow Hub - the Spellow Hub was broken into, looted and set on fire at night during the riots. The Spellow Hub is a newly created one-of-a-kind (in the UK) institution, which consists of a library as well as a community centre with a mission to help people get education and pathways to work

Books for Spellow Lane - another fundraiser for the library in the Spellow Hub, to replace the books and rebuild the library there edit: included the correct link

Hartlepool:

Fundraiser for the Nasir Mosque - the Nasir Mosque was attacked following Southport riots; this fundraiser is organised by Hartlepool citizens to help the mosque deal with the damages as well as to show appreciation for the role of the mosque in the community. edit: the funds will be also distributed to the local community!

Rebuilding the Farm Shop - the shop was targeted during the riots, and when the owner and his son tried to protect it, they were also violently attacked. The fundraiser is to help fix the damages to the store.

Sunderland:

help rebuild Citizens Advice Sunderland offices after arson - two of the Citizens Advice Sunderland offices were set on fire during the riots, and one of them is completely destroyed.

Hull:

Hull Help for Refugees - a local fundraiser to support the Hull Help for Refugees charity, the donated money will be re-distributed to community members affected by the riots

Fundraiser for Hull Help for Refugees and Welcome House in Hull - collected money will be donated to the two charities

Belfast:

help fix racially motivated damages - originally the fundraiser for the Sahara Shisha Cafe which was targeted by the far right in Belfast during the riots, now a fundraiser for all affected businesses in the area. edited to reflect the change of the name of the fundraiser to avoid any confusion

Middlesbrough:

Supporting residents after the riots - Middlesbrough has suffered so much during the riots, lots of businesses as well as just regular family homes were vandalised, had their windows smashed or even were broken into. This fundraiser wants to distribute the funds between affected people to help them fix the damages, and to generally support the local community. the newest fundraiser, imo potentially the most urgent one

Fundraiser for a Care worker's car which was set on fire - a car belonging to an employee of a care agency was set on fire during the riots while he was on shift at a care home.

If you want to donate locally but there is no fundraiser to support where you live, consider donating to your local charities oriented towards Muslim or PoC communities, or towards anti-racist and refugee organizations! And go support your local Muslim/Arab/Black/Asian/Refugee owned businesses!

If you have any information about other local fundraisers, feel free to add to the post or don't hesitate to let me know and I will add them here! We have seen so much hate in the past few days, we have to stay strong and keep supporting each other!

Stay safe everyone 💛

[magicicephoenix]

i finally finished reading I see you, Sundrop! by @shirajellyfish and IT'S SO GOOD I CAN'T BELIEVE IT TOOK ME THIS LONG TO FINISH IT RAAAAAAA

i will be gushing about it in the tags but here's a lil animation i made based on the below paragraph in chapter 6 that gave me such a strong mental image that i had to make it real :)

[tariah23]

The manga industry, especially JUMP, needs to hurry up and do away with weekly scheduling for mangaka. There needs to better regulations put into place for their health and safety because this is pitiful. Two weeks - monthly updates should’ve already been the standard for the manga industry at this point. These money grabbers will only continue to put the lives of these artists at stake for the sake of capitalism unless some serious changes are implemented.

[bluegiragi]

learning moment (part 1)

early access + nsfw on patreon monster!AU masterpost

more explanation under the cut

I think that so far, Soap has clearly demonstrated himself to be the more emotionally intelligent one of the pair, but it doesn't mean he doesn't still get frustrated at times. He's also just an emotional guy, and is working himself up a bit. This is a difficult topic for him to want to remain calm over, and there's a lot of factors contributing to his reaction.

One big factor is that he is a werewolf and he sees things through the eyes of his human side and wolf side. The shades of grey that Ghost sees in the Mexico operation just isn't there for Soap - to him, Ghost's 'pack' was under attack and he successfully defended it (this 'pack instinct' is something he shares with Price). The fact that his wolf now considers Ghost his in some way also contributes to his upset over having to read about what happened to him in such a clinical way. Werewolves can be kind of irrationally territorial, and although Soap is used to reading reports just like this, the fact that it's concerning Ghost (in probably the most vulnerable state of his life) is raising his hackles.

It's not a fight, because at the end of the day, Soap isn't mad at Ghost, just at his circumstances. But he's basically just asserting some emotional boundaries here with Ghost (who is, for what it's worth, I'd say a bit surprised and mostly bemused here.)

[lgbtlunaverse]

There's a version of the "don't go grocery shopping while hungry" rule specifically for writers where you should never under any circumstances be allowed to touch your draft within 3 hours of reading a really good story. Because sometimes when you read something great your head goes "fuck this is so much better than my stuff I should make that more like THIS instead!" Look at me. That's the devil talking and you should close the document NOW.