#its the objective truth

[j4zz4lop3]

Andrzej: jan paweł jest z resztą niepełnosprawny, wszystkie jego dzieci to geje

[mikonoe]

[points to mlm ship] yuri.

[bixels]

As cameras becomes more normalized (Sarah Bernhardt encouraging it, grifters on the rise, young artists using it), I wanna express how I will never turn to it because it fundamentally bores me to my core. There is no reason for me to want to use cameras because I will never want to give up my autonomy in creating art. I never want to become reliant on an inhuman object for expression, least of all if that object is created and controlled by manufacturing companies. I paint not because I want a painting but because I love the process of painting. So even in a future where everyone’s accepted it, I’m never gonna sway on this.

if i have to explain to you that using a camera to take a picture is not the same as using generative ai to generate an image then you are a fucking moron.

[shkika]

As a new Ultrakill fan, i just discovered about w1 and i'm obsessed with the lil guy! I wanna hold them in my hands like a bug :3

nobody can be as obsessed with W1 as itself hehehe

thank you so much!!

[treatsformeeko]

This dialogue has always baffled me. It is locked behind a 30 cunning check, which I think may be impossible to reach without cheats at this early stage in the game (?) but its implications are INSANE. Entirely too long tirade below the cut:

How could the darkspawn possibly know the plan? Does it have anything to do with darkspawn showing greater signs of intelligence (re: the Architect, the Messenger)? Awakening was being written before DAO came out — was this meant to tie into that?

Many people online have discussed that it may be a remnant of abandoned plot threads that paint loghain as more of a mustache-twirling villain, working with the darkspawn (either willingly or perhaps under their influence?) to make sure the signal fire doesn’t get lit. David Gaider explained at length that the Ostagar plotline and the Cailan/Loghain conflict were subject to numerous rewrites. And while it is true that there is no further dialogue to suggest that Loghain was working with the darkspawn as this dialogue implies, my next question is what were his men doing in the tunnels underneath the Tower of Ishal?

Even before I had seen this exact line, in my first playthrough I operated under the assumption that Loghain had purposefully sabotaged the Tower in order to place blame on the Grey Wardens (an already easy scapegoat given their very recent return from exile) once he inevitably quit the field. I never once thought that his decision to retreat from Ostagar was made in the heat of the moment — after all, why would Howe already be making moves on Highever if he thought that Cailan would be alive after the battle to punish him for it? And if it were the case that Loghain planned for Cailan to die at Ostagar, why would he allow the signal fire to be lit on time and still quit the field knowing that some of his men would see this as betraying the King, regardless of how good he was at being a leader? Was it just a very happy accident that the darkspawn overwhelming the Tower and delaying made him look less villainous to his own army? Why would he leave this up to chance when so much of his plan before this seems to be so carefully crafted?

Frankly speaking, much of the deeper DAO lore seems to be happy accidents — constant rewrites and abandoned plot threads coming together to create a genuinely interesting story where the truth is not easily identified. And honestly, I think it benefited greatly from this! The truth is messy, especially when there are this many players vying for power in some way or another.

Personally, I’m of the mind that dev-lore comes secondary to what actually makes it into the game, even when the devs had better ideas than what we got. Which is why it is so fascinating that this line still exists in game and yet is nearly impossible to obtain! Why does it still exist? Why is it so hard to obtain? What implications does it have on the greater plot?

I don’t necessarily have an interesting conclusion beyond the fact that I am still in awe at the reactivity of this game that is objectively pretty clunky and ugly by today’s standards. I love Loghain as a villain in part because he is so human, and as much as I enjoy the sequels I really think that he is one of the best antagonists of the entire series. I find it really interesting that his reputation is not entirely shredded to pieces by Inquisition, as some Ostagar vets still sing his praises, which just further drives home the point that he has the capacity for good AND evil! I mean hell, the whole game is about making sacrifices for the greater good. Couldn’t you still argue that that was what Loghain was doing (or at least thought he was doing)?

All of this being an entirely too-long wind up to say: fuck you Quartermaster Threnn. I know what I saw.

[dayurno]

the first thing you have to understand about kevin day is that he’s incredibly straightforward and always means exactly what he says. the second thing you have to understand is that his favorite social media is linkedin. the third and most important thing is that she would be happier as a woman

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

genuinely I think one of the most pressing calls for Christians (namely Protestant Christians) today is to stop underestimating the power of beauty

visual beauty, beauty in word, beauty in sound, beauty in story

we have ceded beauty for the past 70 years to the atheistic world and people of all beliefs are realizing that world has failed to carry that standard. people are realizing their daily lives are starved of beauty--especially natural beauty--so they are turning to the entities which recognize its power. entities like paganism, witchcraft, ancestor worship, the New Age. if they are drawn to Christianity (not necessarily believing it), they are more likely to attend a Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox mass.

humans need beauty because humans need God, and beauty belongs to God. which means the church should be the standard-bearer of beauty in this world.

if a church can afford it, they should prioritize building a beautiful church, even if that means it will be smaller or less trendy.

if a church has skilled musicians in their midst, they should prioritize using those musicians in worship, even if it means the style of the music changes.

the church should always prioritize hymns and spiritual songs which exemplify goodness, truth, and beauty in their composition and lyrics, even if it means newcomers don't understand every line yet.

all these forms of beauty should reflect the beauty of the story of the Gospel.

[obsessedwithstarwars]

An excerpt from a fic I’m writing:

“DON’T-”

The Red Hood turned toward her so fast, he hissed as he felt a sharp pain in his side. Oh right. He’d been shot. Twice.

“Touch that.” Jazz finished quietly. She strode over to his bedside and sat down, revealing a first aid bag. She waited until he nodded his consent to check his bandages and started to change them.

Shit that hurt. Her touch was light but a bullet wound was still a bullet wound. In an attempt to keep his mind off of what she was doing, he asked about the object.

“What is it?” She looked up. He nodded his head toward the… whatever it was. He could have sworn it had a faint green glow around it now.

“Oh that.” She resumed her work while she spoke. “It’s highly contaminated. One touch and your food will come alive and attack you for days until it wears off.”

Ooookay. Not what he expected to hear. And she was so nonchalant about it.

“Really?!” He asked incredulously.

“No!” She finished wrapping his side with new bandages and moved on to his arm.

“I just don’t want you to touch it.” She said with a mischevious smile, then resumed her work.

He chuckled at that, then winced at the pain.

“Careful. Don’t tear the stitches I put in. I won’t do it again.”

[write-to-tell-your-story]

Sometimes the point of a story is to be very realistic in its portrayals of people and/or the world it is set in.

Other times, the point of a story is to be a power fantasy, or a nice black & white escapist fantasy, or a horny fantasy, or all sorts of other fantasies that provide people with a fun and cathartic break from reality and all its gray areas and unfortunate truths and overwhelming systemic power structures that leave us feeling helpless against faceless enemies we don't always know how to fight.

Sometimes, "this story is unrealistic," is the point.

Seek realism when it serves the story. Throw "realism" out the window when something else will serve your story better.

[marciaillust]

mom come pick me up people related to my personal posts too much

[slankyyy-revs-the-world]

That one Steven Universe meme ft. the worst brothers known to all of Faerghus

[queer-omens-in-the-archives]

so we've spent the past three months writing MelloNear daily, and we've worked on enough different pieces in that time that i now have some Thoughts as to the narrative purposes they each tend to serve in our own works (this is not. about canon though i suppose it DERIVES from their canon dynamic. this is very much about how we personally play with the blorbos)

by and large Mello serves to drive the plot, regardless of the position he is put in within the universe. we don't even have to actively be trying to do anything with him -- even in our more Near-centric pieces, as long as Mello is present? his emotions, whims, wants are what shapes the trajectory of the story, his emotional beats are the beats that drive the plot forward. he feels, he impulses, he injects stuff into the sequence of events. things happen because Mello wants them to (or pushes Near to make them happen if/when he himself cannot).

meanwhile Near is much less of a driving force for the plot and more of a reflective force for the story. he isn't IRRELEVANT to the plot, he doesn't do NOTHING, but most of what he does from a plot progression standpoint is reactive. like, he acts not because of an inner drive, not based on his own wants or needs, but largely when his circumstances require action of him. (by circumstances i don't just mean Plot Events. sometimes what he reacts to are his own emotions, like in sweet atonement, when they are so overwhelming that he cannot put them aside to strategise effectively anymore -- the keyword here being "effectively", because even then his first response will still often be to try to strategise.) by and large what Near does do is provide space for reflection, for thought, for analysis. things happen to him, or through him, and he thinks about them a bunch, and he'd leave it at that if Mello wasn't pushing him.

so they make for super neat storytelling when you figuratively drop them together in a jar and shake them around, because it's like. Mello pushes Near into action Near wouldn't take on his own; and then Near adds weight to Mello's direction, provides a deeper sense of spacetime, fleshes out the places where Mello takes him that Mello wouldn't necessarily stop at or consider on his own. like at their core, in the way we write their dynamic, Mello Does and Near Is. and mixing them up, you get: all of the essential elements for a compelling story!

and obviously im not like, talking in absolutes, none of this is true 100% of the time or the only possible reading of them, nuance exists etc etc. but that's the general trends we're starting to notice in our own MelloNear writing over the past few months

[jewfrogs]

watching dan and phil from a young age ruined rpf for me not because of moral objections or anything but because any other rpf will never be phan. people are out here shipping coworkers that dont talk to each other meanwhile i bear the psychic scars of watching the vday vid as a 12 year old

[shallowseeker]

6x01

///

So, he HAS thought about this.

///

6x21

The only way for them not to be in danger, logically, is if the two of them not viscerally attached to Dean's head/memories. So, you'd think he'd have asked Cas to remove them from his own memories, too.

(And even that might not be fool-proof.)

But that's clearly not the case because...

[bananasfosterparent]

So the interview saying that Asc Astarion is "still him" (as we already know) and how ascending him is basically Tav confirming to him "yes you should be in fear".... I've seen strange reactions to it. Or rather, strange reactions about our reaction lol

Spawn weirdos and Fixers: "the Asc girlies aren't gonna like this, no no no! Hahahaha they're going to deny it all! This will destroy them!"

Asc Astarion fans: *giving the interview actual analysis and consideration* "Yeah that makes sense, he lives in a dangerous world and so many people could be after him. It would make sense for Tav to fear for him and want him to recognize that there are very real threats out there. And to help him ascend is to tell him that those fears are real and he'd do well to take out insurance against them (ie. ascending). And while that may lead to unhealthy habits (paranoia for example, especially for vampires), it's a valid and healthy thing to recognize in moderation if that's how you want the narrative to go."

[3416]

everyone bitching about the pwhl logos and names all day long is so boring lol. i get that its in sports fans nature to never be happy about anything but fr the only reason established teams branding across every league is accepted is bc of longevity lkgfjdskl... like sports teams just have some of THE dumbest names available and i think it's a hard task to try to please any population of people about something that subjective but... i'm just excited that there gets to be a brand identity for these teams now for good.