#just my take on it

[befuddledcinnamonroll]

It's interesting to see the takes that the sex scene felt unearned. I respect that view, but I don't see it that way.

Tharn has been repressing himself hard, because of his past trauma around loss (not just from this life, but lives before). And of course, Chalothon has been in his head since childhood, exacerbating all of these fears.

Tharn is a subtle character. His surface reaction to things is often ambiguous. This is intentional. He is water. He may have massive turbulence under the surface, but he's not going to show it.

The show has been extremely consistent in showing that when Phaya is impulsive, when Phaya shows too much fire, it scares Tharn away and gives him an excuse for distance. He's not actually angry at Phaya, he's desperately trying to maintain distance because he is terrified of losing him, and Phaya's fire nature gives him the perfect excuse. It reminds that subconscious reincarnated part of himself of all the reasons they cannot be together.

But - when Phaya is sincere, when Phaya attempts to calm his flames and bridge their worlds, Tharn softens. He comes closer. He can't help himself. Because he loves him. He has loved him, for eons already.

And Phaya is figuring things out. That talk at work is incredibly important. When he's being sincere and showing Tharn how scared he is of their distance, of losing him, he gets that immediate softening. Immediate physical contact, and a promise.

And Phaya learns from this!

He keeps probing Tharn, but gently. He brings Tharn to his home, a place of warmth and comfort. He makes him feel safe.

He brings Tharn to a pool, and lets him sit in water. He makes gentle physical contact. And he gives him all the sincerity he has to bear.

And Tharn can't hold out anymore. Phaya deliberately removes, piece by piece, anything Tharn can hide behind to keep his defenses up.

[miize]

Another ford au... mayhaps?

[formulaocean]

Max got the penalty- he defended in that specific instance too aggressively and cost himself points. That does NOT mean that he’s a bad wheel to wheel racer, have you not been paying attention to the majority of this years races?

HAVING SAID THAT Lando was consistently and aggressively dive bombing him despite having reached a penalty for track limits. That is not how you launch any kind of championship contention and is the same mindset that was so costly to Max in 2021. Acting like you made no mistakes in your race is pointless, maybe that move wasn’t on you but the strategy certainly was.

[mayhasopinions]

Okay so i've just had an epiphany on a few ATLA ships and how the show could have handled them

I've never really liked Kataang. I found their dynamic really awkward in a romantic setting and the way Aang idealizes Katara and always brushes her off at her worst and how Katara always acts like a doormat to Aang and his treatment towards her always made me really iffy on them as a couple, and the show didn't really do anything about resolving Kataang's baggage.

HOWEVER, Zuko never treated Katara like that. He always saw her as his equal, and accepted her in all of her flaws, and never manipulated or gaslit her in the time they were friends (season 3). To have Katara overcome her frankly one sided and imbalanced relationship with Aang and realise that she deserves better in Zuko would have been super compelling. (if you want a more indepth analysis on Kataang and Zutara as a whole i would recommend watching Sneezy Review's video on it)

So then I was thinking to myself, who would Aang end up with? I think that he would be really good with Toph! Toph isn't a cruel person at heart. She can be snippy and rude at times, but she deeply cares for her friends, and I don't think she would treat Aang badly. Also, if Aang ever were to pull any of that guilt tripping uwu innocent baby man manipulation shit on her, she would not STAND for that, she would not try to appease him like Katara always did. She would talk some sense into him and he would realise what a douche he was to Katara, then setting the reord straight on what a healthy relationship would be, then having that with Toph, solidifying his arc with letting go of his attatchment of Katara and coming out of it a better person.

so bing bada boom all wrapped up in a nice neat lil bow, everyone's happy

[gabriels-golden-kazoo]

Sometimes I think about how, if he actually had the chance, Gabriel probably wouldn’t have gone back to Heaven.

Because surely it wouldn’t have been like returning home? After all if you think about it his home was Michael, Lucifer, and Raphael. They were his home, and when that was destroyed he left because his home wasn’t safe anymore.

Even if he did decide to return I think it would be almost haunted to him, the distant memories destroyed by the cold reality that Heaven had become.

[digital999placebo]

I feel like denying your whiteness is not only denying ur own I dentity which sucks, but also denying ur privileges? There’s no shame in having privileges bc of ur ethnicity bc it’s nothing you can control, what you can do is admit to it and be normal about it??? The whole “I’m not white I’m actually 2% norweigan” is not helping anyone

[vampemoqueen]

A VTM hot take

VTM is more of a crime thriller than a gothic horror. VTM is a game about underworld politics: sects, clans, and organizations fighting amongst themselves while also worrying about the law and innocent civilians. Vampirism and the Beast are more like complicating factors than the main source of angst. They're a means to find relevance and success in a cutthroat world where almost no one makes it out alive and happy.

[sarcasticsouthernbookworm]

I was also thinking about this earlier, isn’t this also a good indicator of one of the many reasons that you break up monopolies

So ONE company can’t take this much down with them

idk if people on tumblr know about this but a cybersecurity software called crowdstrike just did what is probably the single biggest fuck up in any sector in the past 10 years. it's monumentally bad. literally the most horror-inducing nightmare scenario for a tech company.

some info, crowdstrike is essentially an antivirus software for enterprises. which means normal laypeople cant really get it, they're for businesses and organisations and important stuff.

so, on a friday evening (it of course wasnt friday everywhere but it was friday evening in oceania which is where it first started causing damage due to europe and na being asleep), crowdstrike pushed out an update to their windows users that caused a bug.

before i get into what the bug is, know that friday evening is the worst possible time to do this because people are going home. the weekend is starting. offices dont have people in them. this is just one of many perfectly placed failures in the rube goldburg machine of crowdstrike. there's a reason friday is called 'dont push to live friday' or more to the point 'dont fuck it up friday'

so, at 3pm at friday, an update comes rolling into crowdstrike users which is automatically implemented. this update immediately causes the computer to blue screen of death. very very bad. but it's not simply a 'you need to restart' crash, because the computer then gets stuck into a boot loop.

this is the worst possible thing because, in a boot loop state, a computer is never really able to get to a point where it can do anything. like download a fix. so there is nothing crowdstrike can do to remedy this death update anymore. it is now left to the end users.

it was pretty quickly identified what the problem was. you had to boot it in safe mode, and a very small file needed to be deleted. or you could just rename crowdstrike to something else so windows never attempts to use it.

it's a fairly easy fix in the grand scheme of things, but the issue is that it is effecting enterprises. which can have a looooot of computers. in many different locations. so an IT person would need to manually fix hundreds of computers, sometimes in whole other cities and perhaps even other countries if theyre big enough.

another fuck up crowdstrike did was they did not stagger the update, so they could catch any mistakes before they wrecked havoc. (and also how how HOW do you not catch this before deploying it. this isn't a code oopsie this is a complete failure of quality ensurance that probably permeates the whole company to not realise their update was an instant kill). they rolled it out to everyone of their clients in the world at the same time.

and this seems pretty hilarious on the surface. i was havin a good chuckle as eftpos went down in the store i was working at, chaos was definitely ensuring lmao. im in aus, and banking was literally down nationwide.

but then you start hearing about the entire country's planes being grounded because the airport's computers are bricked. and hospitals having no computers anymore. emergency call centres crashing. and you realised that, wow. crowdstrike just killed people probably. this is literally the worst thing possible for a company like this to do.

crowdstrike was kinda on the come up too, they were starting to become a big name in the tech world as a new face. but that has definitely vanished now. to fuck up at this many places, is almost extremely impressive. its hard to even think of a comparable fuckup.

a friday evening simultaneous rollout boot loop is a phrase that haunts IT people in their darkest hours. it's the monster that drags people down into the swamp. it's the big bag in the horror movie. it's the end of the road. and for crowdstrike, that reaper of souls just knocked on their doorstep.

[inkskinned]

please i love you i'm begging you bring back suspension of disbelief bring back trusting the audience like. i cannot handle any more dialogue that sounds like a legal document. "hello, i am here to talk to you about the incident from a few minutes ago, because i feel you might be unwell, and i am invested in your personal wellbeing." "thank you, i am unwell because the incident was hurtful to me due to my childhood, which was bad." I CANT!!!!

do you know how many people are mad that authors use "growled" as a word for "said"? it's just poetics! they do not literally mean "growled," it's just a common replacement for "said with force but in a low tone." it's normal! do you hear me!! help me i love you please let me out of here!!!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Knowledge Revenge.

[violeteclipse2002]

yeah like so many international sporting events where each country gets to compete, it's generally viewed by society as if it's a fair competition of nothing more than athletic ability. but in reality, countries with higher populations, more resources and/or more money have absolutely massive advantages all the way. an athlete might be significantly better at say swimming than an athlete from a larger richer country, but is likely to still have much less chance of winning in international competitions for a myriad of reasons largely to do with access to resources, money and time to practice.

it's fun to root for your own country, but i also love when a small nation that has only like 5 athletes and who never had the same level of resources, support, and money despite everything still become the best in the world

it just gets me man... makes me happy 😭

[wuntrum]

ripley :)

[carefulzombie]

gf fandom in 2016: if you so much as hint - even jokingly! - about the nature of ford and bill’s relationship being anything other than platonic (and even then you NEED to give a disclaimer that bill is manipulating him!) then you support abusive relationships

gf fandom in 2024:

[runawaymarbles]

The midjourney stuff just reminds of when we were trying to find a new platform to host the ao3 donation form, and companies kept trying to tell me about all their "ai" features that would track donor engagement, and figure out the optimal pattern to email individual donors asking for follow up donations, and all the ways they suggest we manipulate people into staying on our websites. It was a great way to filter out who either wasn't listening to us when we described our ethics and donor base, or just didn't believe us.

Now granted ao3 is a unique case based on a) the amount of page views we get in any given time period and b) the fact that most donors absolutely do Not want to be identified as such anywhere, (the default "list of recent donors" module got nuked Immediately) but it surprised me some that the concept of "donors who value their privacy and would be furious at even the whiff of AI" is unique. Some of us really are just existing in different worlds.

[perrieedwards]

i feel like people are skimming over the uk riots in a way that makes me want to tear my hair out. muslims in the uk are in active danger. immigrants in the uk are in active danger. refugees in the uk are in active danger. people of colour in the uk are in active danger. asian communities in the uk are in active danger. black communities in the uk are in active danger.

there are massive far right riots throughout the country right now and people like fucking elon musk and nigel farage are inciting it and still have a platform to speak. people have used three young girls deaths, people's genuine grief in southport, to try and gain traction for their own racist bullshit and it's working.

a lot of refugee charities have been forced to close leaving many people without support, homes, funding, food, etc. if you aren't able to donate please consider sending a message via the conversation over borders campaign! it will send a hopeful, welcoming letter to a refugee in the uk. there is also a guide to staying safe here.

please do your own research and donate to refugee charities, anti-islamophobia charities, mosques who are trying to rebuild after being destroyed, counter protesters, here are some i've heard positive things about but the list is extensive; southport strong together (support for the southport victims and their families), southport mosque rebuilding, riot repair fund, middlesbrough vulnerable residents, nasir mosque rebuilding, hull help for refugees, bristol welcomes migrants,

[lazylittledragon]

can't believe we're all adults being forced into the club penguin level of censorship in 2024