#like that is an assured mutual distruction

[superloves4]

Will never forget this one person that said Tolkien made a mistake by putting Galadriel with Celeborn and that she should have ended with Celebrimbor instead, no hate to people who like this ship without being dicks about it, but because of that all I can think of this relationship now is

[tiktaaliker]

sometimes I like to look on genius lyrics to remind myself how people are sooooo wrong about the themes and motifs in everything everything's music

[pathetic-gamer]

You're so incredibly nice to ask abt Farrow, my beloved mutual. Perhaps I can return the favor by asking if there's anything you'd like to share about your OCs? What are mutuals for if not mutual exchange? (Mutually assured destruction perhaps? 🤔)

I love hearing about OCs!! (And I love mutually assured distruction)

Okay, this time I'm gonna talk about Jargen (pronounced "yargen"), the dragon ranger from when I played Quest. I honestly think about him all the time - he's one of the few characters I've drawn actual art of (I drew our whole party from that campaign lol)

Quest is one of my favorite ttrpg systems - it's free and open source, pretty loosey-goosey with the rules, character classes are "roles" and are focused on the role you play in the party as a whole, the skill trees are really unique and fun, and it's great for telling a good story in a very collaborative way.

Jargen was a ranger (link goes to the official role description lol). He's a wandering poet of few words - other than when performing his epic tales or giving dramatic, rousing speeches - with dreams of overcoming the image of a monster and becoming a hero of the people who would live on forever in song, and with a terrible fear of becoming the monster everyone believed him to be. His skills were focused on storytelling and wilderness survival.

Our party was a group of freelancers who all accepted the same job regarding helping a woman find her sister. There was a human doctor in the group, Feign, and he and Jargen became close friends very quickly and shared a number of fun dramatic bonding experiences including but not limited to failing to kill a mouse and nearly dying for each other.

What follows is a rather dramatized version of certain events as recalled by Jargen when turning the experience into an epic poem:

When I say Jargen and Feign were close friends, I do of course mean they shared an impossible to describe warriors' bond of drift-compatible entwined souls that only grew stronger with every new bonding experience.

One of the earliest of these was the very first evening of their adventure, while Jargen was mourning the loss of an animal companion. The party was camped in some very old woods, and he took first watch so he could take some time to himself. Instead of letting him be alone, Feign sat with him and opined on death from the perspective of a physician with an innate connection to the dead and dying, a long career of going wherever he was needed most bringing back the living from the cusp of death and guiding the dead across the final threshold in peace. He shared with Jargen his deep fear of undeath, and Jargen in turn shared his fear of being seen as a monster.

While they were talking, Feign mentioned that places like this, these deep woods and ancient trees, were actually full of death, despite how very alive they are. He then touched Jargen's hand and gave him a glimpse of the world as he saw it, leading to Jargen having a sudden and overwhelming experience of seeing hundreds of spirits of creatures large and small, animal and sentient, and even spoke with the ghost of a child. It was enlightening and comforting and terrifying. After this, Jargen and Feign became inseparable.

When Jargen was overcome with rage and prepared to trap dozens of people in a building and burn it to the ground rather than risk letting single vampire - the monstrous perversions of life that they are - escape, it was Feign who talked him down and instead devised a plan to help the living flee.

When Feign was bitten by a vampire and knew he had limited time to find a cure before the infection set in, it was Jargen who offered his own blood to sustain him. (Ultimately, though, Jargen agreed to Feign's request to put him down the moment he passed the point of no return so that he wouldn't have to suffer his greatest fear of becoming undead.)

There did, of course, come a time when they walked the line of near tragedy and each sacrificed themself for the other, both nearly dying in the process. I wrote a dramatized version here, but I can do one better this time!

One of the features of Quest is that you're supposed to write a summary of each session from your character's perspective - Jargen's were, of course, composed in verse. Here is a very brief portion of what he wrote in the aftermath of that near-tragedy:

Steel glinted, cold and bloodstained red held in the villain's hand When from the dark he lunged again, a killing blow to land But Jargen’s feet were faster far, And to Feign’s side he flew To take the brunt of the attack Though the grave cost he knew “Flee now, my friend,” the dragon said, As Feign looked on in fear “I beg of you to trust me now - Your path must not end here.”

(I said he was a poet, but I didn't say he was a *good* poet)

I unfortunately can't share the whole thing because it's not finished and also it's very long, but that's a tiny fraction for your enjoyment lmao

okay thank you for reading, beloved mutual <3

[otaku-tactician]

bruh the fate fandom on here is like mass speed mutually assured destruction (i was gonna type distruction or dickstruction) but yeah. damn. its like some fire emblem battle map inteface lvl stuff going on here. chess pieces all over the tumblr. i may have eaten a few out of boredom.

[glorioustidalwavedefendor]

Look, I dodn't need friends to catch a movie, or have a laugh or talk about popular shit

Any aquaintance will do for that ... even a colleague  will ...

Friends are for the hard stuff, the fun stuff you do with them is to balance out the hard stuff ... and yeah, soetimes it is not fun ... but you do it anyway becasue you know if you need them they will be there for you ...

It's like mutually assured distruction ... only positive ...

the commodification of friendship is the most annoying thing to come out of the internet in ages. like actually i love to break this to you but you're supposed to help your friends move even if it's hard work. or stay up with them when they're sad even if you're gonna lose sleep. you're supposed to listen to their fears and sorrows even if it means your own mind takes on a little bit of that weight. that's how you know that you care. they will drive you to the airport and then you will make them soup when they're sick. you're supposed to make small sacrifices for them and they are supposed to do that for you. and there's actually gonna be rough patches for both of you where the balance will be uneven and you will still be friends and it will not be unhealthy and they will not be abusive. life is not meant to be an endless prioritization of our own comfort if it was we would literally never get anywhere ever. jesus.

[dellardragon]

When this episode of Cosmos aired in December of 1980, the first 15 minutes of it terrified me as a hatchling. As young as I was, I understood the implications. The horror that was being described. I think many of my generation (I'm 42), honestly on some level didn't really expect to live to see adulthood. The madness, and the clear consequences of what seemed to many of us as inevitable (global nuclear war) permiated the culture. It was practically a foregone conclusion that the Cold War could only end in such a global end to everything. When the Cold War endded and the Wall fell in Germany in the early 90s, many in my generation were ecstatic. Our futures seemed like they were given back to us. Hope was being given back. Maybe we wouldn't die in a flash of nuclear fire. Maybe we could actually build a life. And that's what alot of us Gen Xer's did. Now I watch the news and see many of the same mistakes of history being made again. Like we learned nothing from all those times that our world came close to being burned to a cinder in the madness of Mutually Assured Distruction. Now, more than any other time we need to remind ourselves why the Cold War was a horror. Why we need make to sure that we don't fall into a similar situation now. We were given a second chance. Let's not waste it...

[storyprovision]

You’ve just stumbled upon a pretty major revelation in literature, one which a lot of people don’t like; a lot of the story ideas that get popular start out as metaphors for human behavior. A lot of sci fi, especially, is written this way — I’m legit in a class on it right now and this is exactly the sort of thing we talk about. It’s easier to get people to read a far-fetched fictional world where the thing you dislike is taken to an extreme than to get them hooked in a statistical analysis. Context changes over time, sure, but it’s especially important to look at the context of when things came out, especially when the first work to use a trope came out.

There are a lot of sci fi movies from the U.S. in the 50s, for example, that can be boiled down to “communism is scary” and “mutually assured distruction is bad” for exactly that reason. But a lot of them do have invading aliens or robots in them — or we are the aliens, traveling to another inhabited world. And what tends to happen over time is that people take the elements that Look Cool and use them again, and you have robots Just Hanging Around without being a lens through which we examine what it means to be human, and yeah you get aliens Blowing Up Stuff on Earth without it being intended as a way to draw parallels to our own human behavior.

Actually, you’ve got me super curious now. I’m gonna go see if I can find the origin of the Aliens-Need-Our-Resources trope.

Meanwhile, can I recommend a couple good stories that relate to the Human Contact With Extraterrestrials theme? Here’s some short ones:

Mars is Heaven! by Ray Bradbury. I had to read this one for class.

The Watery Place by Isaac Asimov

The Gentle Vultures by Isaac Asimov

When I Was Ms. Dow by Sonya Dorman

None of them are quite about alien resource use but they’re all interesting anyways.

you know how most alien species that attack earth are portrayed as these monsters that travel from planet to planet consuming all resources and destroying all life?

usually the first planet they ruin is their home planet

and every so often i get this needling thought that is becoming my greatest nightmare: 

humanity is going to become an intergalactic plague of locusts 

the monsters of our stories were us all along

[subtotechno]

youre currently laying directly above where the purring comes from yknow. mutually assured distruction i could knock you out in like two seconds. do you really want to test me?

...

can i...?

hi m8 :)

cozy..?

- @angelxxreaper

im a psychic

uh. i mean. yes, yeah, im good. comfy.

[jadzia-suggestions]

I’ve had my times of doubt, too: there were periods when it felt like the dread and cynicism would last forever. My wonder at the Universe and at the strength and beauty of the Federation is hard-won; the product of time and lots of practice. Sometimes it really does just take faith to hold onto that despite dark times and sorrow.

Don’t be hard on yourself for doubting, or for feeling it’s all too much to fix. Just do what you can each day to make life better for those you can touch, and try to be gentle with yourself. That’s often the hardest part, especially if you’re carrying the spectre of a disapproving parent.

It’s fascinating to learn your perspective on the resolution on the generations of strife between Vulcan and Andoria. That’s certainly not how historians from either world tell the tale. To hear them, humans came out of their quiet little system bearing the light of peace and truth! Even the Vulcans almost mythologize it. Even with a common enemy, don’t discount your role: it’s no easy thing to get two feuding powers cooperating, much less THREE! I spent — Curzon spent — seventy years in the diplomacy business: I know what a feat that is. Threat of fire can help, but it can just as easily prove disastrous.

Some Federation worlds joined for mutual protection, or for trade benefits, or because of other common interests. The lasting peace with the Klingon Empire was a slow process, first as an alternative to mutually assured distruction and then finalized in the wake of a seeious natural disaster that left the Empire in need of aid and allegiance that the Federation was in a strong position to provide in exchange for the long-sought peace. Since then, those treaties have been strengthened by the need to unite against common enemies, but after almost a century our cultures truthfully function better alongside one another than at odds.

The Romulans are a different case. Our history with them has always been difficult, and in the most recent war they joined our alliance against the common foe only just in time to avert disaster. They’ll probably be uncomfortable allies for some time to come, but it’s still a step in the right direction. I’m optimistic about the future there, because I know that the best outcome will never come to pass without people who believe in it. I’m prepared to be one of them, even if it means being seen as naïve and overly idealistic in the short term.

You’re already building a better future for Lis and her sisters. It’s okay if it doesn’t always feel that way. They know it, and so do I.

I can tell about the timeline divergence or what I know about it. When would you want to talk about it?

Excellent! Now’s as good a time as any. I suppose the most logical place to start is the point of divergence. What can you tell me about that, and how did you learn about it?