#it's seriously so irritating

[starry-bi-sky]

*hits blunt* Joker has a long-standing one-sided beef with Nightingale in the Blood Blossom au because Nightingale clocked his shit almost immediately and began "sharks are smooth"ing at him. But because Nightingale only comes out in case of emergencies, Joker has to come up with increasingly convoluted schemes to trap the Batman in order to lure him out.

This has the opposite desired effect because this is the equivalent of using increasingly difficult locks to keep the raccoons out of your trash. All you're doing is teaching the raccoons how to pick locks. This also pisses off the other Rogues because Joker keeps making trapping the Batman exponentially harder all because he's beefing with his teenage son.

[vorbarrsultana]

moiraine when playing stupid games (knowingly pushing rand for the same thing lanfear does, isolating him from his friends, so he doesn't have anyone but her to lean on, ignoring him when he doesn't do what she tells him to) wins her stupid prizes (rand starts to believe anything she does is the elaborate attempt to gain more control of him and doubts her motives)

[huellitaa]

argue w urself! 💬🐧

🎀💭 𓂃 ࣪˖ just to preface:

i do not mean this in a negative sense!! this post is just 4 the argumentative people who always need to be right to use that in a helpful way ♡

obviously this probably won't work for everyone, so take it with a pinch of salt. just a little thing i like to do to satisfy my craving for victory!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

as a PROFESSIONAL at arguing and making sure i come out right and on top, as usual, i have found myself utilising this to my own benefit more and more as of late.

cancelling out the bad thoughts with good ones is not a new phenomenon, and neither is getting into a sort of conversation with yourself whilst performing said cancellation. but they still stand as some of the most effective methods of mindset shifts, and we'll be making use of that in this method.

the only difference with this tactic is that you have intention and victory. which for people like me, who always need to be right and win every argument ever, can be super fun and super effective!

🐈‍⬛️👛𓂃 ࣪˖ so... what does that mean?

this means that whenever you find yourself thinking something negatively, whether it be about yourself, another person, or just something the ideal version of you wouldn't be thinking about, you fight back!

you argue, mentally, in a semi civil yet strategic manner in ur head, until you get the outcome you want; proving that thought wrong. that is the goal. eliminating it entirely. it is not what you want, so you allow yourself, the ideal version of you, to get rid of what doesn't align with you. if this can happen physically, then it can happen mentally too, with your mindset instead!

think of it as a sort of cleansing. dont consider this thought hostile or an enemy, consider it something lost and needing help. because that's what it is. don't be cruel to it. be cool and collected and smart and strategic and argue until you get the outcome you want. plus, its great practise if you get into any real arguments too! (just in case ♡)

all my love! 🎀💬🐈‍⬛️🫶🏻🩷

[jpegsthatmove]

ACTUALLY, I cannot stop thinking about the object lesson Solas gives Rook about finding alternate ways to remove opponents

Solas: “I made people laugh at him”

Me: aaah, so very smart! The god of lies and trickery using propaganda and misinformation to undermine the credibility and fearsomeness of an adversary! I wonder how he demeaned him in the public eye? What inventive rumors did he spread that eroded his reputation and power?

Solas: I used magic to psychologically torture him into a mental break :)

Me:…

[bannock-freak]

"shipping saiki is aphobic because he's aroace!"

stares at you with my demiromantic asexual in a committed relationship eyes then looks at the camera like im in the office

[junewongapologia]

The fact is tho that no matter how you look at it, no matter how insufferable she is, no matter how Out Of Touch, regardless of whether she’s doing herself no favours: Eloise is right about society and just about everyone else in the show is wrong.

Like, she’s not got the full picture, she’s blinkered and her political philosophy is not very in depth or well thought out. But she’s right, and I think that’s why a lot of people watching really don’t like her because she’s breaking the illusion. All in all, the 1810s were a shit time to be alive for most people, and you can “well actually” it all you like, but the Luddite movement existed for a reason, the Chartists existed for a reason, Porto-feminist writers like Wollstonecraft and de Gouges wrote what they did for a reason.

So when you keep being reminded that it was a terrible social order for women - in a show targeted mainly towards women for escapist purposes then that character is going to come across as irritating, because she’s ruining the immersion.

Really, her attitude isn’t more anachronistic than the dresses, or the hairdos, or the diamond necklaces (men and women had been advocating women’s right to vote since before Eloise was born, lads), but it’s a problem because people are watching the show for the sweeping romances and the general regency vibe, they don’t want to think about how the regency was for most people. Which inevitably leads to some incredible projection, when watchers of a show with the central conceit of only being interested in the love lives of the top one percent of the one percent of the British aristocracy acting as though Eloise is the only privileged person on the show.

And yeah, she is better off than most of the people who exist in all of Regency Britain (though if you were to take the show as read, Britain is made up of about 70% aristocracy, 1% gentry, 5% urban bourgeoisie and 24% urban workers), but she’s the only one whose privilege is harped on out of her whole family and social circle. 99% of the speaking characters in the show come from a posher background than Beau fucking Brummell.

And! Eloise is literally just about the only main character who ever has to question her privilege! And when she is in season 2 she doesn’t throw a shitfit, she’s willing to learn! She goes out of her way to hear perspectives that she wouldn’t have heard in her social circle! But the narrative punishes her for that, and that’s because for all the criticism she gets about needing her privilege checked, they don’t actually want her to learn, they just want her to shut up and enjoy the trappings of regency decadence as much as they do.

Also - I know it’s really fashionable to rag on “pick-mes” and “Not Like Other Girls” - but actually, no, “traditional femininity” has never been socially unacceptable for women the way being GNC is, and it is in fact ruthlessly socially enforced against GNC women, even more so in the 1810s. Eloise is a teenaged girl in a society that stigmatises her for her wish for more legal autonomy, the idea that she’s somehow the villain for not being able to enjoy “feminine” hobbies without seeing them as just another element of the way women’s education is trivialised as ornamental, is farcical. “Sewing is a valuable and useful skill” so is cooking, but there’s a reason my mam, and not my dad, had home economics lessons, and that reason is still misogyny, despite the fact that it set her up better for being able to operate independently as an adult.

Idk I’m just kind of uncomfortable that in a world of rising reactionary political sentiment towards women, and this seemingly increasingly re-normalised view that women need to be wives and homemakers, people feel that the person on the show who needs to do the most introspection regarding their politics is an eighteen-year-old who is vocal about the fact that she has limited legal rights, and not any of the adult men in the show (a lot of whom probably have seats in the Upper House!!!) who never mention politics at all.

And frankly, given the shower who were Having Political Opinions in the long eighteenth century, Eloise’s brand of semi-anachronistic protofeminism is infinitely preferable to Hannah “I refuse to teach the poor how to write in my schools” More, or Edmund “don’t read my big thesis on revolutions too closely it’s definitely not all lies and junk history” Burke, or even a load of prominent members of the Bluestocking Society.

[kandavers]

Thank god HSR added a skip button for the game; (almost) everyone in Amphoreus has really irritating speech quirks

[beijodefrade]

how long did it take Stan to learn all he could?

I mean, for thirty years he only had one journal, so I wonder how much time he spent actively fixing the portal and for how much time he was simply... searching

when he finally had all three journals things moved along pretty quickly, so I believe he knew everything he could with the limited information he had, and grasped the rest of the instructions easily

imagine how frustrating it must've been, after teaching himself science he never thought he could comprehend, cracking Ford's codes, and at some point all of that just wasn't enough

he learned so much but couldn't figure it out the rest by himself, and it was worse than when he was clueless because now that things make sense, he knows exactly what he can't do, what would be too risky – understands enough to know what's broken but not enough to know how to fix it

all that's left to do is find the other journals and I think that's how he spent the better part of those years

I wonder what went through his mind when he realized Dipper had one of them all summer

[deus-ex-mona]

sometimes, i think about how ☝︎this rando☝︎ from the [redacted] anime inspired me to tl idol sengen out of spite for her butchered characterisation

[nerdalmighty]

hey! so, i just recently started playing baldur's gate 3 after seeing people put it all over my dash for months--and you're one of the people i've seen reblogging a lot of posts about it LOL. so if you don't mind me asking, i was wondering what kind of character do you/did you play as? and do you have any sort of backstory for your tav that you'd like to share?

Hoooooooooooooh my god thank you so much for asking. I have a friend who comes over to watch me play on Thursdays and I make a powerpoint every week to catch her up on what she missed - this week's powerpoint literally has slides about my Tav's background (more on those later). This is about to be long, I'm about to drop ALL my lore so buckle up! AND THANK YOU FOR PUTTING UP WITH MY BG3 BRAIN WORMS!!!!! I'm glad they convinced you to play 😈

So to begin, I've been in my first ever dnd campaign with a group of friends for a little over a year now. I didn't know much about Baldur's Gate except that it was a dnd video game and that you could romance people. Me, being a Big Fan of Romance And Fantasy was like "okay well I'm in" and my friend actually let me start a game at his house. Through that, I met Shadowheart, Gale, and Astarion.

Backing up a bit to my character; I decided I'd put my character from my irl dnd campaign into the game since I already knew her whole deal. I get pretty overwhelmed with making decisions, ESPECIALLY with big open world games like bg3, so knowing who/what I wanted to be really helped me out.

In the campaign I'm in with friends, it's pirate themed, and I play a half-elf bard named Birdie Harp who's secretly half-siren (murder mermaid). To make a long story very short, she was born in the arctic and escaped her murderous pod during a coming-of-age trial where she also lost her siren abilities (hypnotizing voice, breathing underwater, etc).

I've watched a ton of Dimension 20 which is an actual play show on Dropout.tv (an "actual play" is where you watch other people run a campaign of dnd - like Critical Role, which a lot of people have at least heard of - HIGHLY recommend Dimension 20, as I find it incredibly funny and easier to get into than CR because of the episode lengths), and I knew that I really liked the silliness and theatricality of the bard class. I also loved the bards from The Owl House which helped influence my decision as well.

To be honest, Birdie is my first ever dnd character, so she's basically a self insert but with a MUCH more traumatic backstory than me (this IS dnd after all). As for the half-elf aspect, it was more of an "I want to be half mermaid, what's similar to that?" as opposed to a love for half-elves or something.

BACK TO BALDUR'S GATE - knowing I wanted Birdie to be in the game, I felt a lot less overwhelmed to come up with something entirely new - I knew a lot about the bard class having played one so I wanted to CONTINUE playing one (and I've learned even more since playing bg3!).

When I finally got my own game (I no longer play at my friend's house, but in the comfort of my own home), I recreated Birdie and started on my journey in earnest. I'm VERY MUCH someone who likes to be in control and know what to expect, so I've had guides and walkthroughs to help me the whole time - SUE ME! When it came to first meeting Shadowheart, Gale, and Astarion back at my friend's house, Gale actually immediately stole my heart - a kind, witty wizard who likes books and cats? Literally say less. I went home from that session with my friend fully thinking I'd be a Gale girlie until I really looked into the other options and saw The Vampire.

Blah blah blah, he's hot and funny, but he can also be incredibly soft, which really won me over in the end. So I've been romancing That Guy.

Through Acts 1 and 2, I wasn't all too sure about this version of Birdie's background - sure she COULD still be that half-siren from the arctic, but the game kept suggesting she was FROM Baldur's Gate. I LOVED the inclusion of the harpies in Act 1 and thought maybe that was a viable entry point for her backstory, but so far, she was kind of just... me? She was making the choices I wanted to make (and a few that I knew Astarion would like lmao), but she wasn't really her own entity apart from me except for her name. She also felt vastly different from that character I'd created for my friends over a year ago. For instance, my irl Birdie currently has a crush on a Gale-type character, but this Birdie is ass deep in Astarion (hey, sorry I said "ass deep in Astarion"). The thing I love about Baldur's Gate 3 is how you can really come up with your own backstories, since the in-game one for your Tav is so vague. It's totally fine to ignore tiny details in the game and mold them to your own headcanons for your Tav, but I was so unsure of what I wanted for this Birdie that I kind of internalized that she was from Baldur's Gate.

HEADS UP! The following has some spoilers for Act 3 and some side quests, so STOP reading if that's something you'd care to avoid (the last 3 paragraphs of this post are SAFE from spoilers):

When Act 3 finally rolled around (which is where I am currently, I only have the one playthrough so far because I become INCREDIBLY attached to things), I stumbled across the Water Queen's House in Baldur's Gate. Ah ha! Now this felt promising.

A temple dedicated to the Vengeful Sea Goddess, Umberlee, and her loyal Wave Servants to serve her. It's ocean themed, it has mermaid undertones, and their goddess is basically evil. Seems like the perfect place to FINALLY insert this version of Birdie. I wasn't 100% sure until I completed the Iron Throne mission and was faced with either handing a (mostly) innocent man over to the Wave Servants, or fighting to defend him.

Here are a few of the slides from this week's powerpoint that I mentioned all the way back at the start, starting with SOME background on the Wave Servants:

Ass and Shart are what I affectionately call Astarion and Shadowheart (Also I got this beautiful "Birdie" art on Pinterest which originated from someone named Dantrelium on Reddit):

Apologies for the small text here, but there are some more details about THIS Birdie here, which I literally made up/figured out earlier this week:

Essentially, this Birdie was born at the Water Queen's House as Kittiwake Crest - Kittiwakes are common arctic birds, which I thought would be a nice little homage to the original character she was based off of. She was raised by the collective of Wave Servants there, the main one being Flood Tide Allandra Grey who seems to be head honcho at the Wave Mother's House (in this reality, she is).

Since Umberlee is such a vengeful goddess, I imagine she asked her Wave Servants to commit unspeakable acts in her name, mainly drownings, which THEY see as merciful, but I think Birdie always saw as horrifying. Who were they to decide the fates of others? I also think that the Wave Servants themselves were abusive during her upbringing to keep her in line (but much like how Nocturne was a light in the darkness for Shadowheart, I don't think EVERY Wave Servant was evil). GOTTA have a classic tragic backstory.

Upon researching Umberlee, I learned that most of her servants are clerics, so in my mind, that means Birdie was raised to eventually become one, with her official title eventually going to be "Seawind Kittiwake Crest." Is she still half-siren/mermaid though? Not entirely sure. This IS a magical world though, so I'd be inclined to say yes, probably.

But when we first meet the Wave Servants, they're singing beautifully for their drowned sister, Holli. I think Birdie REALLY loved music and singing with her sisters and secretly trained herself in bard magic when she should have been learning to be a cleric. It's also a classic trait of bards to hide their pain through humor, so I often imagine the type of stupid things Birdie gets up to to bring herself joy (my favorite headcanon being when you meet Skittle the Rat in Wyrm's Rock prison - he's a rat merchant who speaks exclusively in puns. I think Birdie and Gale would excitedly throw puns back and forth with Skittle while Astarion and Shadowheart begrudgingly (and affectionately) roll their eyes in the background).

Another thing I love about the game is how you can string together your own ideas of how companions react to things between big cut scenes. For example, in my head, in my game, Astarion has really become a Big Softy thanks to how fucking Stupid (affectionate) Birdie acts in life and has drawn him out of his shell, but also runs a tag team scam with her where she plays her lute to distract people while he loots an entire place. Gale is Birdie's partner in crime when it comes to tomfoolery and loves to joke and fool around with her (so long as it goes easy on his knees). And Shadowheart is basically a sister figure who flip flops between sassing with Astarion and joining in on the fun. THEY'RE JUST THE BEST, OKAY? OF COURSE I'M GONNA WALK AROUND WITH A BUNCH OF IDIOTS. I LOVE THEM.

Anyway, back to Birdie's backstory: she always hated the atrocities that were asked of her, and she was looking for a way out, but was too scared to take that step and leave since the Wave Mother's House is all she's ever known. One night, while stepping out to quietly dip her toes in the water, the Mindflayers captured her, and that's where we start Act One, all the way up on the Nautiloid. She changed her name to Birdie to distance herself from her previous life, fully took up the bard class, and the rest is history.

Back to that dilemma with handing over that (mostly) innocent guy or fighting the Wave Servants: with encouragement from the party, they convince Birdie to face her traumatic upbringing and fight the Wave Servants once and for all. At this point in Act 3, she's basically helped every single person with their problems except her own. Here's another slide featuring Ass and Birdie:

That's right folks, Birdie faced her past! But the bad news is we don't get to see Astarion in this (audio from The Adventurous Adventures of One Direction):

(Video description - Astarion from Baldur's Gate 3 wearing the Wave Mother's Armor with the following audio:

Guard 1: Whoa, check it out.

Guard 2: Hubba hubba hubba.

Gaurd 1: Nice. I love dudes in skirts.

END VIDEO.) I don't want to tell you how many times I recorded that until I felt like I got it right lol. Also yes, I DID do a scum save where I handed the guy over ONCE just so I could see Ass in this outfit, but Birdie did canonically save Redhammer in my actual save file.

And honestly, that's BASICALLY it for now! My most recent save was after that battle, so I need to figure out if Birdie's going to go back with her party to confront the rest of (or most of) the Wave Servants, or if this chapter of her life is closed.

In an ideal world I'd LOVE to make one of those artsy gif edits of my Tav like this and this, but PS5s make it hard to download clips without uploading them to YouTube first which I don't really want to do.

Thank you SO MUCH for this ask, I had a blast writing it!! Sorry it's so long, I just love this game so much and LOVE talking about it. Please feel free to ask more questions OR chat with me about YOUR Tav! I'd love to hear all about them :)

[starbuck]

the worst possible fandom experience is seeing someone passionately and lovingly going on an extended rant about your favorite characters with a premise that is objectively factually incorrect.

[naomiknight-17]

People who are kind of on the periphery of my life - acquaintances, family friends, distant relatives - often comment about how patient I am, whether it's with children or cooking disasters or pet care or what have you

Oh, you sweet folks. I am extraordinarily IMpatient. I have no fucking patience

I am just really, REALLY good at hiding that fact

[lacucarachapisser]

i lied. i will not post colin fics once per month. im ashamed. but i swear to god i love him with my whole life. i wont move on.

[noecoded]

hey guys i hope everyone is having a wonderful holidayy ^_^<33 full of fun things and gameing. nd giving asmo the appropriate amt of love and attention he deserves etc

[audhdnight]

This may have been a bad idea but I was never actually allowed to watch the Ken Ham vs Bill Nye debate, despite every adult I knew as a child ranting at every chance about how Ham “absolutely destroyed” Nye and how it’s such a good example of apologetic science blah blah blah

So I’ve decided to watch it now at the age of 21 as a deconstructing ex Christian evangelical fundamentalist to see how much of what he says is the exact same word for word bullshit I was taught growing up

I’m not even all the way through Ham’s beginning presentation and I’m already fed up. He keeps calling naturalist science a “religion” (which it blatantly is not by any definition) and saying that teaching children to approach science outside the lens of religion is somehow indoctrination and teaching them not to think critically.

Also, y’all probably can figure this out on your own but the issue with creationism is that when you *start* from the Bible and try to make the facts fit it, of course that’s what is going to happen. It’s called confirmation bias. When you go into a situation already assuming that you know what happened, you are going to see every bit of evidence as somehow in support of your theory even when it isn’t.

The difference with non-religious science is that they go in already assuming that we don’t know what happened, and they build the theory from the bottom up, not the top down. They take the evidence and learn from it, not force it into puzzle piece spots where it doesn’t fit.

[butcharyastark]

still havent forgiven yall for making the entire iwtv s2 plot themes of second chances, being failed and hurt again, grief and regret, lost childhoods and infantilization, long game manipulation, artistry and voyuerism, cycles of violence, and the complicated emotions in families with past trauma.... about armandanial. like that season gave EVERYTHING, delivered almost everything it possibly could for louis's arc, to set up claudia's tragedy.. but its abt a weird toxic romance yall invented in ur head. even ignoring the ACTUAL canon fascinating and complicated one ARMAND WAS ALREADY HAVING onscreen bc uhhhh old man yaoi or smth. yall can write a 2k meta post abt the way armand's eyes skated over daniel lingeringly and make every other post in the armand tag abt them but the real story of louis being vulnerable to abuse AGAIN right after leaving lestat or claudia's longing and bitterness for family while unable to trust louis just go unremarked some months later.