#like the reason you do that is so people see it. not even necessarily to get them that mad but just like you are going to

[takaraphoenix]

I saw someone refer to Steter as a comedy relief duo earlier and it just completely sent me, because that's just... so far from what Steter is, in canon?

As I'm currently rewatching the show, it has shot up into being my favorite ship on the show because of the gravitas it has.

It's a ship that highlights Stiles' fearlessness in such intriguing ways, in canon. From the boy who yelled at a feral Alpha in the school, to their first face to face meeting at the school, when Peter recognizes him, knows him, acknowledges him ("You must be Stiles", as though Stiles' reputation as the one who figures things out proceeds him, as he is the first one to put together that Peter is the Alpha).

There's nothing comedic about the scene on the lacrosse field, when Stiles is kneelng beside Lydia's unconscious form and Peter... for reasons beyond comprehension... decides to curl his claws beneath Stiles' chin and guide him up. Not grab him by the arm and haul him up, not command him, not demand.

This is... sensual, filled with tension, and I don't even necessarily mean the sexual tension (even though the imagery of Stiles kneeling before Peter and Peter grasping his chin is something that I find hard to not see a sexual read on).

Peter kidnaps Stiles into the parking garage to force the boy to track down Derek and, sure, the "His username is Allison? His password is also Allison?" - "Still want him in your pack?" is absolutely iconic and is comedic... how do you boil that entire exchange down to "comedy relief"?

The way Peter offers Stiles the bite - Peter, who so far, only took whatever he wanted, never asked or offered - and doesn't force when Stiles says "No". Even the way Peter catches Stiles on the lie is a moment of tension and revelation on Stiles' part. The way Peter acknowledges Stiles as the clever one.

The season 1 finale? When Stiles sets the survivor of a horrific house fire on fire? Absolute riot, huh. It's vicious, it's cruel - it's everything.

And when Peter is resurrected? Sure, Stiles sarcastically asks if someone can kill him again and sure, Peter snarks about living in a cave system. But even in that episode, these brief comedic moments are absolutely overshadowed by the way Peter and Stiles work together, figure out what the vault is made of, then call Scott to warn him and Derek, by finishing each other's sentences. Two brilliant minds working together, on the same wavelength.

The next time they interact is when Peter tells Stiles about Paige, explains what the blue eyes mean. It's one of the more heavy and serious moments in the season, aside from all the death scenes. It's a big lore drop and character background on both Peter and Derek. And it's Stiles this information is shared with. It's a serious moment and even as Peter tells it all, Stiles doesn't trust, sees past the silver tongue and that too is part of the appeal.

When Peter and Stiles work together to save Cora's life in the hospital, while the Alpha Pack is hunting them down? Blind trust. Stiles asks Peter to help him and Peter doesn't even ask, much less quip, he just follows Stiles' lead and they work together.

Now, I'll admit, I haven't seen seasons 3B through 6 in six years and hey, maybe they'll be a real Abbott and Costello in season 4 and I'm just not remembering it, but damn it all to hell if the first half of the show doesn't present them as two clever minds challenging each other, with a growth from terror and pain to respect and teamwork.

I understand and respect not liking a ship, but I am genuinely baffled when people deliberately misinterpret a canon to suit their needs. Always makes me wonder what alternate reality's version of the show they were watching, surely not the same as me.

[burr-ell]

Given your thoughts on the so called “status quo” of late Campaign 3 (huge agree), curious what you think about the claim that C3 is showcasing a story critiquing colonialism and imperialism through the gods? I personally don’t think that the narrative around the gods that we’ve been given lends well to that reading, at least not as a strong criticism of colonization because the gods are shown to be more akin to refugees in the opening of Downfall and cannot conceivably be called colonizers of mortals since they are the ones who created mortals in the first place.

Also if the argument for releasing Predathos is “the gods are colonizers because they aren’t from Exandria and took it over from the Titans and Primordials” letting another, “bigger fish” colonizer loose to chase them off doesn’t seem like the best solution to that tbh.

I’ll also be honest that I don’t think CR as an entirely white American main cast are set up to best carefully/thoughtfully deal with the concept of colonialism in their games (case in point: the first C3 intro, which would ring even weirder if C3 was meant to critique that from the beginning since Matt has supposedly been planning this plot for years).

- @exandrian-moonlight

So I think it's worth noting that because this is a longform improvisational medium, the themes aren't necessarily set out from the beginning and can grow organically over time. We see that in Vox Machina's relationship with power and grief and legacy, and the Mighty Nein's relationship with family and duty; neither Matt nor the cast necessarily intended those to be explored from the beginning, but they found a lot to work with in those spaces. So it's not outside the realm of possibility that Matt and the players will see a theme there that wasn't intended at the beginning. And because these are people, who are perfectly capable of having views I disagree with, it's also not outside of the realm of possibility that the cast will view Campaign 3 as some kind of critique of colonialism after all is said and done, and if so, I have no intention to change my view that it's a bad one.

Other people can and have talked about why the story of the gods as colonizers doesn't really work even out the gate, so I'm not going to get into it myself, but I will maintain the argument I've made in the past: if this is meant to be something about colonialism, what are the actionable steps? Like, in the real world, there are initiatives taken by indigenous peoples and advocacy groups (Land Back, IWGIA, to name only two of thousands) with clear, expressed goals and policy proposals. What, exactly, is the plan once we get rid of the gods? What do we do for the Primordials? The reason the gods destroyed or sealed the Primordials and the Ashari guard the elemental planes is that the Primordials kill all the mortals, so...do we just stop guarding the elemental planes? Let the elementals run amok and kill everyone?

Also, and this gets at your last point: have we maybe considered that it's at least a little bit weird to compare real-world colonized peoples to violent embodiments of elemental chaos who want to kill all mortals?

[burningcheese-merchant]

Hello, can we have more vampire BS stuff? I think cannibal BS is really hot👍

"I think cannibal BS is really hot"

Well I mean. I think regular BS is hot and he's a mass murderer so I guess I'm not really one to talk

He doesn't NEED to eat people (at least... not at the beginning), he just needs their blood. He just goes the extra mile because he is that vile and hateful of a person. (Might be a pinch of that curse also warping his mind further but whooooooo knooooooows)

He still tries to go hunting at night, even despite being so weak during that time. Combination of his constant need to stave off boredom like the selfish, ungrateful brat he is + insatiable bloodlust and penchant for random violence + actually, legitimately increasingly insatiable hunger/thirst for blood and flesh

Nobody really knows what's wrong with him because he honestly doesn't behave that differently. Shadow Milk knows but does nothing to help because he's an asshole and he thinks it's funny to see Spice like this

Added element of human (cookie ig idk) sacrifice in Wild Spice culture in this AU, both as a punitive measure (anger me = I devour you and your loved ones) and as a more general form of worship and appeasement (also, live sacrifices vastly preferred)

Again, he majorly leans on the Soul Jam as a crutch at night. It keeps him warm and maintains what little strength he has left that has not been drained by the night/moon. And then he still tries to abuse it as much as possible by pushing himself to his limits (and often beyond. Dumbass)

If he goes too long without sustenance then he becomes feral. Like, he starts losing the ability to speak coherently and shit. He pretty much devolves into a wild animal, incapable of higher reasoning until his hunger is satisfied

He doesn't necessarily care who he eats, but he does prefer adults in their prime, if only because they're not too chewy (kids) or too dry and brittle (elderly)

Also he wants big and tough animals as meals. No deer or ducks or any other pussy shit like that. Either hunt down an elephant for him or kys (you're welcome to do that as well tbh. Your guts can be garnish for the elephant or something)

Thought of adding shippy stuff but decided to let you and others have this cursed lore by itself

(Here is what's being referenced btw)

[chappydev]

I don't really think they're like, as useful as people say, but there are genuine usecases I feel -- just not for the massive, public facing, plagiarism machine garbage fire ones. I don't work in enterprise, I work in game dev, so this goes off of what I have been told, but -- take a company like Oracle, for instance. Massive databases, massive codebases. People I know who work there have told me that their internally trained LLM is really good at parsing plain language questions about, say, where a function is, where a bit oif data is, etc., and outputing a legible answer. Yes, search machines can do this too, but if you've worked on massive datasets -- well, conventional search methods tend to perform rather poorly.

From people I know at Microsoft, there's an internal-use version of co-pilot weighted to favor internal MS answers that still will hallucinate, but it is also really good at explaining and parsing out code that has even the slightest of documentation, and can be good at reimplementing functions, or knowing where to call them, etc. I don't necessarily think this use of LLMs is great, but it *allegedly* works and I'm inclined to trust programmers on this subject (who are largely AI critical, at least wrt chatGPT and Midjourney etc), over "tech bros" who haven't programmed in years and are just execs.

I will say one thing that is consistent, and that I have actually witnessed myself; most working on enterprise code seem to indicate that LLMs are really good at writing boilerplate code (which isn't hard per se, bu t extremely tedious), and also really good at writing SQL queries. Which, that last one is fair. No one wants to write SQL queries.

To be clear, this isn't a defense of the "genAI" fad by any means. chatGPT is unreliable at best, and straight up making shit up at worst. Midjourney is stealing art and producing nonsense. Voice labs are undermining the rights of voice actors. But, as a programmer at least, I find the idea of how LLMs work to be quite interesting. They really are very advanced versions of old text parsers like you'd see in old games like ZORK, but instead of being tied to a prewritten lexicon, they can actually "understand" concepts.

I use "understand" in heavy quotes, but rather than being hardcoded to relate words to commands, they can connect input written in plain english (or other languages, but I'm sure it might struggle with some sufficiently different from english given that CompSci, even tech produced out of the west, is very english-centric) to concepts within a dataset and then tell you about the concepts it found in a way that's easy to parse and understand. The reason LLMs got hijacked by like, chatbots and such, is because the answers are so human-readable that, if you squint and turn your head, it almost looks like a human is talking to you.

I think that is conceptually rather interesting tech! Ofc, non LLM Machine Learning algos are also super useful and interesting - which is why I fight back against the use of the term AI. genAI is a little bit more accurate, but I like calling things what they are. AI is such an umbrella that includes things like machine learning algos that have existed for decades, and while I don't think MOST people are against those, I see people who see like, a machine learning tool from before the LLM craze (or someone using a different machine learning tool) and getting pushback as if they are doing genAI. To be clear, thats the fault of the marketing around LLMs and the tech bros pushing them, not the general public -- they were poorly educated, but on purpose by said PR lies.

Now, LLMs I think are way more limited in scope than tech CEOs want you to believe. They aren't the future of public internet searches (just look at google), or art creation, or serious research by any means. But, they're pretty good at searching large datasets (as long as there's no contradictory info), writing boilerplate functions, and SQL queries.

Honestly, if all they did was SQL queries, that'd be enough for me to be interested fuck that shit. (a little hyperbolic/sarcastic on that last part to be clear).

ur future nurse is using chapgpt to glide thru school u better take care of urself

[sokkastyles]

"they also don't like any narrative that involves characters having to change in any way, because that acknowledges that they weren't perfect and unproblematic to begin with."

Man, that's so true.

Also, it annoys me when people say Enemies to Lovers is about a woman fixing a man. I mean, nobody said Darth Vader's redemption was about how children need to fix their parents, you know what I mean?

(also the trope is not always about a male villain and a heroine but you know)

I do like narratives that subvert the idea that a woman needs to fix a man (which is one of the appeals of zutara, btw) because that is very much an expectation that exists. But at the same time, there's also a certain kind of misogyny in assuming that a woman is always a victim in that kind of relationship or she's always this innocent little flower who believes so earnestly that she can fix a terrible man, and we need to save her from this wrong thinking, the poor dear.

People don't say that about Darth Vader despite Luke so earnestly believing that his father had a shred of goodness left that he nearly died for the sake of that goodness, and would have died if Anakin's goodness hadn't prevailed, because we see Luke, and male characters in general, as heroes, as actors in the narrative rather than victims.

If Luke were a girl, then him giving himself up to the Emperor on the off chance that he could save his father might have been criticized as sexist, and that wouldn't necessarily be wrong. People are wary of those kinds of narratives with good reason, because women so often are the victims of this kind of abuse. So I get where the wariness about this kind of narrative is coming from, I really do.

But at the same time, I also wish we would stop treating female characters with kid gloves all the time.

One of the things I love about Katara is that she doesn't always make the right decision. I do think it's true that Zuko fixed himself, and that would not be diminished even if he and Katara got together. But at the same time, Katara did take a chance on him, and she did get hurt because of it. But the decision was always her own, and I think that's an important aspect of her narrative. She tries to tell herself afterward that Zuko tricked her into trusting him, because it's a means of protecting herself from those hurt feelings, but that isn't what happened, and by the end of The Southern Raiders, she learns both to accept that Zuko is a person who made mistakes and to live with her own mistakes. The fact that her confrontation with Yon Rah ends with her stating that she's not sure whether choosing not to kill him makes her strong or weak signifies that she's become much more comfortable with that ambiguity. She doesn't need anybody to protect her from her own choices, whether those choices are right or wrong. She forgives Zuko not just because he's proved himself worthy of her forgiveness, but because she's learned to forgive herself for trusting him in the first place. But she never would have been able to do that if she hadn't gone at all, if she hadn't put herself out there to try and help Zuko. And she wouldn't have grown into the confident, strong hero she is at the end of the show.

[shyravenns]

many Chimera thoughts... not that informed about how PMC's work, but, do you think Nikolai joins them on operations or is he working in the background? How do you think his relationship with his.. teammates.. (Employees?) are? Is he as close with them as Price is with his task force? Does he get personal with them, open himself up or is he closer to TF141 than he is with his own men? I feel like he wouldn't be that cold of a boss, considering he handpicked most of them. Maybe a reasonable distance. Would he interfere with their private lives? Nikolai would know everything about them, even if they think they can keep their secrets.

sorry for the long ask, I really like your take on Nikolai and always look forward to seeing what you think of him 🙏

Anon pls know that the moment I saw this ask I got SO excited to answer it, and I was so pissed that I couldn't bc I was at work 😭

As weird as it sounds, I imagine Chimera being run similarly to Team Rocket (or any of the antagonist Pokemon groups).

Because Nik is a bit of a rouge agent, I think Chimera is a pretty big operation with smaller regional Chimera leaders (all of those who Nik trusts with his life) running them and going on missions. Nik practically receives little to no oversight, so the true scale of his network is pretty unknown even to Laswell.

I don't think Nik has the same level of casual camaraderie that Price has with his boys, but there are certain members like Syd and Farah with whom he has a close relationship. Regardless, Nik does know every member, and he is almost aware of the goings-ons of each smaller group.

Nik is a scary man, but he's also extremely personable and fiercely protective of those he considers his people. There's a reason why his operation hasn't fallen apart and why he's managed to live so long. I don't think he's a cold boss, but a strict one. And I think Nik also has a bit of a perfectionist streak during missions and he expects the members of his group to be better than good. He's both handpicked members and received recommendations (with INTENSE scrunity)

Nik is the mom who if you get into an argument with he won't *really* apologize to your face, but you'll turn around and see him standing there with your favorite gun or knife as a peace offering. He loves his people, and even if he scares the living daylights out of someone he'd want you to know that as long as you're on HIS side then you're good.

Your enemies are his.

I wouldn't necessarily call Chimera a family, but I always think of it as being part of a bigger community. As much as Price inspires loyalty, so does Nik, and the ones who chose to follow him follow him for a good reason.

He's close to the members of 141, but they're not *really* his people. You could consider them his step-kids in a way lmao

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

wanna ask how you feel about the eridan bpd headcanon/theory(?? not sure what to call it!) you're so good at your character analysis and i'd love to see your outlook on it

Since I don't have a degree or any formal training in psychology, I feel deeply uncomfortable diagnosing characters. I've made an autism joke before but only because I'm on the spectrum. He's definitely traumatized and anxious, but I mean those as descriptors of his behavior rather than capital-D Diagnoses. I try to focus on those when I can - the cause and effect of cognition, self-image, and behavior - and those factors may very well match up with DSM criteria, but I try not to touch an actual diagnosis with a ten foot pole unless the author has explicitly stated that X character has Y condition.

[hermitcraftx]

just got a dm abt one of my posts and y'all please don't try and show the hermits (or any minecraft youtuber or content creator for that matter) my posts, i'm uncomfortable with it and don't want any of my posts shown to a cc. if they stumble upon it naturally that's unfortunate but i can live with it since i do maintag a lot (something i REALLY need to stop doing tbh i already know i need to make a tagging system just for my blog that wont clog results) but going out of ur way to show a cc is entirely different and something i am not comfortable with.

no hate to the person at all but even if i wasn't a little silly and weird with it sometimes i wouldn't be comfortable with it, i want my blog to be a purely fandom only space with none of the creators involved <3 please respect this

[uncanny-tranny]

Maybe it's just me, but part of why I never really felt completely secure in being public about my own artistic endeavors was how... being proud of yourself in any capacity for any reason is almost a faux pas, if that makes sense.

I've noticed how it's almost expected to perform the air of humility, but is that humility? Is it humility to say, "Oh, I'm sorry for clogging your feed with my awful art" or anything to the effect of self-deprecation?

I think that's why I so often gravitate toward those who make "bad art." There's a sense of freedom that is only achieved with the level of hubris that being unashamed in the number of people who hate your art. I wonder, though, how many people don't hate the art as much as they hate that they can't chastise the artist into humility, into recognizing how "terrible" an artist they "actually" are?

[jubileebloom]

I aspire to be a lover not a hater. but

[seventh-district]

I'm probably far from the first person to say this, but you can't tell me that this song doesn't just scream Aventurine, c'mon.

[allisonreader]

My heart hurts. Not physically, but emotionally. I don't like the news, I tend to avoid actively searching it out, for that exact reason. I ache because as people we just can't seem to get along. Learn to compromise and fully try to understand the other side. It's exhausting to understand why people are against certain things, even when it's the opposite of what I personally believe in.

[20w14a]

Was gonna make a convoluted post talking about Evil X and Worm Man since y'know I like them a lot as evidenced on this blog but to sum it up, as funny and neat as they are as just plain joke characters they really do feel like foils to each other and I really wish that was shown more.

[age736]

For the Greater Good

Perhaps you do not believe what you are doing can truly be classified as evil. Perhaps some people will be hurt from the immediate consequences of your actions, but what the masses fail to see is the immense good that will come of your plans. Maybe you act in the name of science, or for your people who have fallen on great tragedy. Maybe you see cracks in a failing system and want to uproot it through chaotic, destructive means to avoid greater tragedy down the line. Maybe you're just in with a bad crowd, but you can't leave them, no matter how unsavory their intentions, because they're your only ticket to your ultimate goals. No matter what, your goals are noble, and you take no joy in wreaking havoc or hurting those in your way, but the evils you partake in are necessary. If you need to play the bad guy to ensure a better future, then you are willing to play that part.

tagged by: @acoldsovereign tagging: idk take it if u wanna

[notmoreflippingelves]

So I know, I know, we all hate it when people add comments and especially lengthy ones to posts that are no openly encouraging them. Nevertheless, I'm gonna do so in this particular case because the novel that I was writing in the tags just got too too long and I was frighteningly close to the tag limit.

The things that would fix Esteban Flores are (in roughly this order)

A found family (preferably one totally divorced from connections to his bio family) and/or a small child to take care of.

A heartfelt apology from his biological family (definitely Luisa, probably Elena, and maybe Francisco as well).

A hug x1000

Being shaken

Enough sleep

But most especially the first two.

Esteban's issues stem from being made to feel like an afterthought and/or an obligation to his family of origin. In his mind, he was not chosen or wanted. He was liked, loved even--but he was loved because he was familia--not because he was Esteban. He was not enough in and of himself, especially not when compared to Elena.

Do you know why he continued to tend the cacao trees during the Dark Times? Yes, it was out of love for his family, but I think there's a bit more to it than that. His abuela shared something private and meaningful (i.e. how to take care of the cacao trees) with him that she didn't also share with Elena. He was welcomed into Luisa's world--if only for a moment. This was his, the rare thing that he didn't have to sacrifice to or share with Elena. No one could take this away from him--the moment of feeling seen and chosen. Not even the fact that this moment was very very much an anomaly and the rest of his youth (and his adulthood) consisted of him being shoved into the corner of some family portraits and left out of others entirely---and no one noticing this for years.

In "Something I Would Never Do," Esteban outright states "Years ago/ I did not know/Just how much they cared for me." He's just now realizing after 40+ years that his family just might love him (50+ years if you go back to when Esteban moved into palace); he's genuinely surprised about it and terrified that he's going to fuck it all up. Yes, Esteban has atrocious self-esteem, but these impressions did not come from nothing. Even now, his family keeps him largely at arm's length. He doesn't appear (or isn't even mentioned) in the two family vacation episodes, suggesting he was left behind. His Navidad plans (the ones he has been dreaming of , all alone for 41 years!) are rejected outright by Luisa, and no one even bothers to ask what the Dark Times were like or how he is coping. Everything has changed and yet nothing has changed. He's there, sometimes he is shown attention and affection, but he's still made to feel that he's not really a part of the family in the same way the others were.

All this is pretty bad in and of itself, but it's made worse by the fact that he's not getting his emotional needs fulfilled from outside the family any more than he is within it. As far as we can tell, Esteban's only real friends as a child were Elena and Victor. (Maybe Felicia as well, but she was far more Elena's friend than his). And neither Victor nor Elena could give Esteban what he needed: the feeling of being liked and chosen for himself and that alone.

Elena is family--the same family has made Esteban feel like an afterthought and obligation, merely liked at best and tolerated at worst. But that's oversimplifying things. Elena is also the impossible gold standard that Esteban will always be measuring himself against. (And it's especially galling that she was 1-2 years younger than him, and he was still nowhere near her level). She's the favorite (and Luisa is not subtle about hiding that fact), the priority, the important one. She's the one who has always been and will always be secure in power and confidence and their familia's love--the exact opposite of Esteban.

Victor, meanwhile, was a horrible influence on Esteban, and not just where Shuriki was concerned. His selfishness rubbed off on his amigo, and his competitiveness and callousness brought out every one of Esteban's insecurities and worst tendencies. It's also very strongly implied that their friendship (at least on Victor's side) was rooted in how 'useful' Esteban was. Through El Segundo, Victor got closer to power/the crown and also found someone that he could feel "superior" to. Someone that Victor could consistently beat at races, so that he could feel like a winner. Someone who wouldn't tell Victor to go to hell if he subjected unflattering nicknames upon.

So yeah, Esteban's childhood primary source of affection/attention outside his family were two people who exacerbated Esteban's already huge inferiority complex. One of whom was part of said family that enabled said inferiority complex in the first place, and the other of whom is wrapped up in the event that caused Esteban to lose his family as well.

And then, Elena was trapped in the amulet and Victor was banished from Avalor, and Esteban was without anyone at all for 41 years. His primary source of attention and affection during this time was the woman who conquered his kingdom and took away his family. Someone who had preyed upon his vulnerabilities from the very start and who kept him alive only so long as he remains obedient and "useful" to her. There's nothing even remotely close to equal or mutual about this dynamic, and Shuriki did even more damage on Esteban's already battered psyche than all of the others combined and multiplied by ten.

Even after Shuriki is gone, Esteban still doesn't have anyone in his life that voluntarily chose to be in his life. His entire social circle is comprised of people that he knows through his family and/or his role as chancellor (and later his magical abilities). There's Naomi, except there isn't, because their dynamic is rooted exclusively in their shared devotion to Elena and their roles on the Grand Council (which is also directly tied to Elena).

Similarly, Doña Paloma interacts with Esteban almost exclusively in reference to his role as Chancellor. Would she give him the time of day if he had no political power or influence?. Doubtful, especially as she seems to really dislike him most of the time. There's a bit more potential for a genuine friendship to develop with Julio or Professor Mendoza, but again, these connections were formed through Esteban's job and we don't really see any interactions that aren't in service to that.

Higgins is explicitly Esteban's employee and given how insensitive he can be to Esteban, it seems unlikely that he has any real non-professional loyalty or affection to him. Same with Armando, except things do seem to a bit more cordial between them.

Esteban seems to have a good rapport with Avalor's allies, especially Toshi and Shoji, but these are unlikely to be anything more than friendly diplomatic connections and ones separated by distance.

So yeah, my boy literally does not interact with a single character on the show without at least one of them doing so out of obligation/duty/job requirement and/or ulterior motive. Fifty years later and almost nothing has changed, Esteban still has nothing and no one to call his own.

[therevengeoffrankenstein]

everything horrible but at least my id photo looks great